USA The World's Dominant Predator

The world is shifting east; but the astonishing vision of Eurasia from China is barely understood in the West. The ‘New Silk Road’ is a ribbon of trade, ports, pipelines and high-speed trains all the way to Europe. China, the world’s leader in rail technology, is negotiating with 28 countries for routes on which trains will reach up to 400 kilometres an hour. This opening to the world has the approval of much of humanity and, along the way, is uniting China and Russia; and they are doing it entirely without ‘us’ in the West.

We – or many of us – remain in thrall to the US, which has intervened violently in the affairs of a third of the members of the United Nations, destroying governments, subverting elections, imposing blockades. In the past five years, the US has shipped deadly weapons to 96 countries, most of them poor. Dividing societies in order to control them is US policy, as the tragedies in Iraq and Syria demonstrate.

‘I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being,’ said Barack Obama, evoking the national fetishism of the 1930s. This modern cult of superiority is Americanism, the world’s dominant predator. Accompanied by a brainwashing that presents it as enlightenment on the march, the conceit insinuates our lives.

In September, the Atlantic Council, a US geopolitical thinktank, published a report that predicted a Hobbesian world ‘marked by the breakdown of order, violent extremism [and] an era of perpetual war’. The new enemies were a ‘resurgent’ Russia and an ‘increasingly aggressive’ China. Only heroic America can save us.

There is a demented quality about this war-mongering. It is as if the ‘American Century’ – proclaimed in 1941 by the American imperialist Henry Luce, owner of Time magazine – has ended without notice and no-one has had the courage to tell the emperor to take his guns and go home.

https://newint.org/features/2016/12/01/the-coming-war-on-china/

Negatory, the US is NOT a predator with Obama in the White House.

The US will only become a predator when Trump is sworn in.

Originally posted by finnegan

The world is shifting east; but the astonishing vision of Eurasia from China is barely understood in the West. The ‘New Silk Road’ is a ribbon of trade, ports, pipelines and high-speed trains all the way to Europe. China, the world’s leader in rail technology, is negotiating with 28 countries for routes on which trains will reach up to 400 kilometres ...[text shortened]... e his guns and go home.

https://newint.org/features/2016/12/01/the-coming-war-on-china/

A couple of his facts are dubious. The two I spotted concern military equipment. The bare facts are correct, but I'm skeptical of his interpretation. The first concerns THAAD

These ‘partners’ include South Korea, an American colony in all but name and the launch pad for the Pentagon’s Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system, known as THAAD, ostensibly aimed at North Korea. As Professor Postol points out, it targets China.

This is correct, THAAD has been put in South Korea by the US. What concerns me are the words aimed at, it implies that the system is offensive, which it basically isn't unless you are concerned about the welfare of ballistic missiles. It's not aimed at North Korea, it's aimed at anything coming from North Korea, who are currently busily testing missiles and nuclear warheads. So the bare fact is correct, but the interpretation makes it sound a far more aggressive move than it actually is. Given North Korea's nuclear testing it's a reasonable response, although not naming a list of countries 'The Axis of Evil', including North Korea in it and then going on about regime change might have been a more effective method of preventing North Korea from developing nuclear ambitions.

The second thing that caught my eye was the stuff about the B61 mod 12.

A mini nuclear weapon is planned. Known as the B61 Model 12, it will mean, says General James Cartwright, former vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that ‘going smaller [makes its use] more thinkable’.

With an intended yield of 50 kilotons it's significantly larger than either the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. It's intended for use against hardened targets and is more precise than older air dropped bombs, which tend to be in the megaton range using explosive force to make up for imprecision. This means that the surrounding civilian population is less of a consideration when selecting targets as the collateral losses will be a lot less than those resulting from a multi-megaton blast. There would be less fall out and so survivors would have a less difficult time. The smallest weapon (that I know of) in the US arsenal was the, now retired, W48 155mm artillery shell with a yield of 72 tons of TNT. The largest non-nuclear weapon the Americans have is MOAB with a yield of 11 tons of TNT, the Russians claim a fuel air weapon with a yield four times that. So, there are two problems with the notion that they want to miniaturize the bomb to make its use more acceptable. The first is that they have already done it, the W48 was never used, I think the various administrations to which it was available understood that even with the low yield they would be crossing a line they needed not to be crossing were they to use it. The second is that it misses what is being made more acceptable - namely the targeting of specific military assets in proximity to civilian populations in a situation where the use of nuclear weapons is already on the table.

Having said that I think his basic point is reasonable enough. The vaguely farcical episode with the submersible drone China grabbed is a symptom of this. The Chinese are going to be a lot more touchy about the US mapping the ocean in their vicinity if the Americans are planning for war, as the exact topography is important to submarines carrying things like SLBM's.

I have to pour derision on this person though:

Andrew Krepinevich is a former Pentagon war planner and the influential author of war games against China. He wants to ‘punish’ China for extending its defences to the South China Sea. He advocates seeding the ocean with sea mines, sending in US special forces and enforcing a naval blockade. He told me, ‘Our first president, George Washington, said if you want peace, prepare for war.’

If you want peace don't seed the ocean with mines, send in special forces and attempt a naval blockade. I wonder if this guy ever wonders why the parabellum bullet has the name it does.

Originally posted by finnegan

The world is shifting east; but the astonishing vision of Eurasia from China is barely understood in the West. The ‘New Silk Road’ is a ribbon of trade, ports, pipelines and high-speed trains all the way to Europe. China, the world’s leader in rail technology, is negotiating with 28 countries for routes on which trains will reach up to 400 kilometres ...[text shortened]... e his guns and go home.

https://newint.org/features/2016/12/01/the-coming-war-on-china/

Reading around this I came across this article [1] which sheds some light on what the US is hoping to achieve with its Naval build up. Mostly the article focuses on hybrid warfare by the Russians, but briefly mentions similar activities by China.

[1] http://www.fpri.org/article/2016/03/how-why-and-when-russia-will-deploy-little-green-men-and-why-the-us-cannot/

Originally posted by DeepThought
Reading around this I came across this article [1] which sheds some light on what the US is hoping to achieve with its Naval build up. Mostly the article focuses on hybrid warfare by the Russians, but briefly mentions similar activities by China.

[1] http://www.fpri.org/article/2016/03/how-why-and-when-russia-will-deploy-little-green-men-and-why-the-us-cannot/

"Epochal warfare analysis projects that a shift from a Westphalian to post-Westphalian global system is underway."

This quote is from the source you cited. What might this mean? You might like to read the opening chapters of Kissinger's book "World Order" and note Kissinger's reliance on the concept of a "Westphalian" approach to international affairs: he wrote -
" The Westphalian peace reflected a practical accommodation, not a unique moral insight. It relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other's domestic affairs and checking each other's ambitions through a general equilibrium of power... Division and multiplicity, an accident of Europe's history, became the hallmarks of a new system of international order with its own distinct outlook."
In reality Kissinger's modus operandi, for instance in the Middle East, was far more cynical that this seemingly benign concept might imply. He had no interest in peace, and instead sought to keep stirring the pot (i.e. provoking and endorsing violence) to prevent any coalescence of forces not congenial to his strategy. Balance of power was his goal, for which he cheerfully interfered in internal affairs all the time. Even so, the concept holds at least in theory that world order depends on a pact to avoid interfering in the internal affairs of other states, something that, as he points out in his book, the USA has a troublesome track record of doing. He mocks the delusion that the USA constitutes some kind of "city on the hill" for the world to emulate and insists that the USA needs to understand the importance of tolerating and working with diversity.

What appealed to me in the text I quoted initially was its reference to the development of economic associations bringing together the diverse nations of Eurasia, including India, around the old Silk Roads. I have written about this development before and been greeted with incomprehension. The immense significance of this new economic super-region is that it is entirely outside the direct control of the USA and Western Europe. What it lacks in technological sophistication and economic skill is being rapidly compensated by massive transfers of knoweldge through education (foreign students keep English universities in business and they dominate the technology and science departments) as well as the transfer of high tech industrial processes to the Far East, where all the manufacturing work once done in the UK or the USA is increasingly taking place. We foolishly assume this is to produce goods for Western markets, but they also produce goods for the new Eurasian markets and those markets are growing while ours shrink.

The insanity is that the USA leadership seems to imagine that this economic and cultural competition can be interpreted and acted upon in terms of military force. That is plainly wrong. The specifics of the military buildups can be debated by others better informed on such things. What is incontestable is the astonishing lack of proportion in US military spending which, as Kissinger bemoaned, is not directed to any concept of "balance of power" but has the utterly destructive goal of world domination. The nation whose ideology is all about the small state is continuing to build the most out of size, out of control military force in history and its electorate is placing all this power in the hands of rather weird individuals, without any effective constitutional checks and balances to impose any serious constraints. The American president may have restricted scope to do anything useful for the American electorate, but he has appalling scope to interfere in the lives of non Americans and the way American policy has been shaped so far has been deplorable. It is not going to improve soon.

Originally posted by finnegan

"Epochal warfare analysis projects that a shift from a Westphalian to post-Westphalian global system is underway."

This quote is from the source you cited. What might this mean? You might like to read the opening chapters of Kissinger's book "World Order" and note Kissinger's reliance on the concept of a "Westphalian" approach to inte ...[text shortened]... ay American policy has been shaped so far has been deplorable. It is not going to improve soon.

I have to agree about that paragraph, its barely in English. I think what they were trying to express is that warfare between belligerent states won't actually cease, but continuously shift between cyberattacks and the real thing and that non-state players will be more prominent. So that states will be in a permanent state of conflict, using means which, at least traditionally, wouldn't be considered acts of war.

Really though, I don't see that there is a strong difference between the 21st Century and the 20th. The internet provides a new medium to spread propaganda, largely consisting of conspiracy theories, but the Soviets were doing that in the West for years. The most significant difference with the Cold War that I can see is that attacks on infrastructure were essentially impossible, but, as we saw with the hacking of Iran's centrifuge controls, new technology allows antagonistic nation states to interfere with each other's infrastructure. As an aside I feel that that as well as the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists is a mistake as there is no evidence that Iran has enriched uranium significantly beyond 20% (weapons grade uranium is around 95%.); Iran might come to the conclusion that it has little to lose by developing a weapon. Nation states have been interfering with each other's internal affairs for years, but not openly. So, it's not obvious to me that they are right and that anything has really changed, except for the readiness of nation states to resort to this type of strategy.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I have to agree about that paragraph, its barely in English. I think what they were trying to express is that warfare between belligerent states won't actually cease, but continuously shift between cyberattacks and the real thing and that non-state players will be more prominent. So that states will be in a permanent state of conflict, using means whic ...[text shortened]... as really changed, except for the readiness of nation states to resort to this type of strategy.

Hmmm. The problems in your account include describing this in terms of nation states, a language that sort of implies some equivalence - what Kissinger saw as a balance of power. As he observes in his book, this was fine for some centuries in the context of European power politics, but fails to embrace the different global environment of empires, in which one - the USA - seeks and claims a right to overhwhelming dominance. In Europe, the unification of Germany destroyed the balance of powers - previously, the German states competed with each other and formed diverse alliances. Globally, the Second World War introduced the potential for USA dominance to destabilise any balance of power. I suppose what I am considering is the possibility for the Eurasian economic bloc (possibly based on the present Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)) to develop as a counterbalance, almost of necessity in the face of US aggression. Europe may even have an interest in working with the SCO rather than the US in the long term. (Watching the evolution of rail networks from China to Europe is a little reminiscent of the story of the Berlin - Baghdad Railway which was a project of the Kaiser at the start of the 20th Century. A major part of his strategy was to challenge Britian's influence in the Middle East and beyond, a strategy which might be relevant again in the context of Brexit, as the UK invites European partners to switch back to active competition.)

The general point is that the USA is failing to engage with other nations on terms of equality and respect, is operating aggressively as well as plain stupidly, and as a result is shaping a hostile environment for itself which need not exist. Continuing to deal with the uncooperative environment by means of aggression and interference is a Neanderthal strategy which may destroy all of us but will never benefit anyone, least of all the US.

Originally posted by finnegan
Hmmm. The problems in your account include describing this in terms of nation states, a language that sort of implies some equivalence - what Kissinger saw as a balance of power. As he observes in his book, this was fine for some centuries in the context of European power politics, but fails to embrace the different global environment of empires, in which ...[text shortened]... derthal strategy which may destroy all of us but will never benefit anyone, least of all the US.

I don't see how I could have attempted to interpret the sentence you quoted without talking about nation states, that being what the Peace of Westphalia was about. The US military is vast - although it should be noted that the PLA has more personnel - and there always were larger and smaller countries in Europe, compare France and Lichtenstein. While there was no one as dominant as the US is now, Britain's naval power was significantly greater than anyone else's (the policy was to have the Royal Navy at least as large as the next two largest fleets combined). I think here is a place where the ideology of American Exceptionalism leads them into difficulties. Britain's historical mission (not that they would have seen it in those terms) in the late 18th and 19th Centuries was the suppression of the slave trade, done largely out of self-interest - the US, on the other hand, sees her historical mission as one of spreading American values and sometimes attempts to do so by means other than persuasion - this encourages them to venture where angels fear to tread. Again it's not clear to me that there is anything fundamentally different from the 19th Century. So while you may be right in your assessment of the international posture of the US, I doubt that that was what the writers of the quoted text had in mind when they wrote it, it being in the context of hybrid warfare. Having said that, the text you quoted was a quote in the original article and I haven't read the article that the quote was from so it is possible. In any case I don't think what I've written is invalid, although I'll accept that it's incomplete, but this is an internet forum and I don't feel that providing a complete account of a subject as complex as international relations is a requirement for a layman to express an opinion here.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I don't see how I could have attempted to interpret the sentence you quoted without talking about nation states, that being what the Peace of Westphalia was about. The US military is vast - although it should be noted that the PLA has more personnel - and there always were larger and smaller countries in Europe, compare France and Lichtenstein. While t ...[text shortened]... as complex as international relations is a requirement for a layman to express an opinion here.

Having said that, the text you quoted was a quote in the original article and I haven't read the article that the quote was from ...

Excellent. As only I have read the article you recommended I have the advantage.

I doubt that that was what the writers of the quoted text had in mind when they wrote it, ...

Well indeed. I am not aware that I implied the authors would agree with my rendering of their concept. I thought I was rather exposing their concept to scrutiny. I also wonder if they know what they are talking about. I am going to guess, however, that it is too big a coincidence to doubt that they borrowed this idea from Kissinger. It is often amusing and informative to investigate where people get their half-baked ideas from. There are other passages I would scrutinise if I met anyone else who had read it. This one sufficed for my purpose.

I don't feel that providing a complete account of a subject as complex as international relations is a requirement for a layman to express an opinion here.

Quite. That, after all, is why one references authorities and cites sources - precisely because one does not make the claim to be such an authority. But also, hopefully, to elevate the debate slightly above the level of he-said-she-said-he said-she said - .

An ideal world is one in which you recommend interesting stuff for me to read and I read it. Thanks.

Originally posted by finnegan

Having said that, the text you quoted was a quote in the original article and I haven't read the article that the quote was from ...

Excellent. As only I have read the article you recommended I have the advantage.

I doubt that that was what the writers of the quoted text had in mind when they wrote it, ...

Well indeed. I ...[text shortened]... eal world is one in which you recommend interesting stuff for me to read and I read it. Thanks.

I read the article I originally linked to, but not the article they were quoting. It turns out to be from the proceedings of a workshop held by The Scottish Centre for War Studies, University of Glasgow, in June of 2015. The page [1] has the quote in a list of conclusions, all of which are paragraphs of that kind of length. They say that they will publish papers in the Small Wars Journal in "the future" (relative to June 2015), but there is no indication as to whether that has happened.

Since one of the main organisers seems to work for the US Army College, and is probably the perpetrator of that paragraph, I think it is unlikely that they would regard the United State's role in the world in the light that you do. You have to bear in mind that they will also be looking at this in considerable detail and will tend to be discussing operational mechanics in a technical way, working out what the behaviour is rather than making moral judgements about the various players. I'll repeat the relevant quote here in full for the sake of other readers:

Epochal warfare analysis projects that a shift from a Westphalian to post-Westphalian global system is underway. In such a period of transition, the dominant state form undergoes a deinstitutionalization process and war is less about issues of state sovereignty and, instead, increasingly over what the new form of social and political organization will be. During this era of change, non-state soldiers and mercenaries become dominant actors on the new battlefield that is emerging — in the present instance, one derived from the 5th dimensional battlespace attributes of humanspace and cyberspace.

I feel that they contradict themselves. Surely what the "new form of social and political organization will be" is a matter of state sovereignty.

[1] http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/%E2%80%98proxy-actors-psyops-irregular-forces-the-future-of-modern-warfare%E2%80%99-workshop

Originally posted by DeepThought
I feel that they contradict themselves. Surely what the "new form of social and political organization will be" is a matter of state sovereignty.

Disregarding any asides or dismissive critique that usually accompany the mention of a New World Order, but given the cast of world leaders who have continued to float that thought bubble and promote one of the foremost agendas of the Council on Foreign Relations is it a contradiction that the final container of global village governance will have all the trappings of state sovereignty?

Can state rivalry and war in whatever dimensions they are waged ever cease while nation states are perpetuated along predominantly ethnocentric and geographical boundaries. While nation states remain the base unit of interaction within international relations, the fault lines of historical competition forever motivate echoes of previous conflict.
New forms of social and political organization that transcend the boundaries of the nation state are absolutely necessary for humanity to be free of economic cycles that are heavily dependent on war in all its forms.

Originally posted by kmax87
Disregarding any asides or dismissive critique that usually accompany the mention of a New World Order, but given the cast of world leaders who have continued to float that thought bubble and promote one of the foremost agendas of the Council on Foreign Relations is it a contradiction that the final container of global village governance will have all the tra ...[text shortened]... y for humanity to be free of economic cycles that are heavily dependent on war in all its forms.

The quote did not originate with the CFR, its not clear to me what they have to do with this. I think relevant aspects of the Westphalian system are that the territorial integrity and sovereignty of states is respected and that a state is responsible for warlike actions by its agents and people. The state does not have to be a nation state, the British Empire was a state but not a nation state, depending on what status one gives to the Cornish there are four or five nations in the UK alone never mind the Empire, so it counted as a single entity in the system. I think what the author of the quote had in mind was events such as the recent tendency of Russia to use Spetsnaz forces and claim that they are insurgents in which ever of their neighbours they intend to destabilize. It is the way war is fought that is of interest to the writers. The "new form of social and political organization" is not a New World Order but a ring of failed states surrounding Russia as part of a defence-in-depth.

Anyway what I'm getting to is that the quote definitely does not refer to some sort of future United States of Earth with one world government. It is talking about warfare between states, between states and non-state players, and even between non-state players (Mafia wars, etc.).

By definition of a nation state it cannot avoid being "perpetuated along ethnocentric and geographical boundaries". Entities such as the British Empire was a state, but not a nation state, it was quite belligerent at times not being a nation state does not cure one of war. So I'd quite like to hear some justification of that last sentence. Since equally, I don't see any underlying reason why nation states necessarily have to be abolished for "humanity to be free of economic cycles that are heavily dependent on war".

Originally posted by DeepThought
The quote did not originate with the CFR, its not clear to me what they have to do with this. I think relevant aspects of the Westphalian system are that the territorial integrity and sovereignty of states is respected and that a state is responsible for warlike actions by its agents and people. The state does not have to be a nation state, the British ...[text shortened]... to be abolished for "humanity to be free of economic cycles that are heavily dependent on war".

Look I’m no expert on war. On the continuum described between linear systemic to non-linear geometric or from symmetric to asymmetric-hybrid there seems a plethora of terms and associated meanings that have much overlap depending on context so I apologize in advance if use a figure of speech at odds with its usual meaning.

Furthermore I recognize that talking about the CFR when Pilger's article references the influence of the RAND Corporation (the planner of America's wars) you would be excused from asking what has the think tank most associated with mapping out America's foreign policy (CFR) got to do with how America might build a consensus to wage war with China or the form that war might take?

I couldn't marshal all my thoughts together last night and post this reply as I had a buddy date to watch Star Wars: Rogue One at the movies. Apart from the fact that it was an all male audience with average age around 45, the movie provided an excellent background to mull over some ideas, and crystallize a nuanced response.

The concept that brings the CFR and RAND CORP together in all of this is the Clausewitz dictum that states "war is a continuation of politics by other means"
This does not fully explain the motivation for a nation state to take a particular stance(aggressive/belligerent or accommodating/appeasement) without disappearing into the rabbit hole of fiat currency and the policies of the Fed and other large central banks in our 21st century context. I do believe that the gravity of debt based money has had an inordinate influence on the predatory policies and actions the US has followed however. Due to the exponential way in which debt grows within a fiat monetary system, the motivation to simply stay solvent is enough to dictate the direction of your foreign policy and the war strategy you develop when politics is not enough to secure the financial leverage you seek in every large financial transaction you make with other nation states or trading blocks.

The subtext of Pilger's article is the trillions in sovereign debt owed to the Chinese. How long will the military hawks be party to a decline in America's hegemonic position as with every passing year the overall Chinese position and balance sheet improves while America's position accelerates into decline?

Originally posted by kmax87
New forms of social and political organization that transcend the boundaries of the nation state are absolutely necessary for humanity to be free of economic cycles that are heavily dependent on war in all its forms.
Originally posted by DeepThought
By definition of a nation state it cannot avoid being "perpetuated along ethnocentric and geographical boundaries". Entities such as the British Empire was a state, but not a nation state, it was quite belligerent at times not being a nation state does not cure one of war. So I'd quite like to hear some justification of that last sentence. Since equally, I don't see any underlying reason why nation states necessarily have to be abolished for "humanity to be free of economic cycles that are heavily dependent on war".

To answer your question on my comment I offer this:-
http://www.corporationsandhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Top-100-Corps-and-Govts-2_Page_2.png

Note that out of the top 100 economic entities in the world as of 2014, 63% are corporations. Back in 2000 it was around 51%. The continued rise of the corporation presents an interesting opportunity to break the cycle of belligerent nation state behavior. The rise of the multinational or transnational corporation in a sense provides a form of salvation from the cycle of politics and war currently practiced by nation states, which is ironic given how often powerful corporations are found to be the root cause of dis-empowering individuals and individual human rights. Globalization will mute the tendency towards aggressive nation state action because of the great opportunity for cross ownership over the means of production and profit sharing for a multitude of investors of diverse cultural leanings. As corporations continue to grow in power and influence, it is likely that nation states will experience a decline in direct political power over competing nations with a reduced impulse for them to go to war. Diversified ownership presents an opportunity for peace because everyone profits when trade continues while everyone loses when trade ceases.

Originally posted by kmax87
Look I’m no expert on war. On the continuum described between linear systemic to non-linear geometric or from symmetric to asymmetric-hybrid there seems a plethora of terms and associated meanings that have much overlap depending on context so I apologize in advance if use a figure of speech at odds with its usual meaning.

Furthermore I recognize that tal ...[text shortened]... for peace because everyone profits when trade continues while everyone loses when trade ceases.

The largest companies by revenue in your list are all oil companies. I don't know which Middle Eastern countries they have interests in, but Royal Dutch Shell is an Anglo-Dutch company, ExxonMobile is American, and BP is British, their interests in that part of the world seem to have failed to prevent any number of wars.

My feeling is that war is cultural, in the sense that one cannot get to the stage of continuing policy by other means (to use Lenin's formulation) unless on has a culture of war, which any country with a military does. What you are trying to do is to address the issues which cause specific wars, where what one needs to be able to address is the fact that it is a live option at all.