Tuesday, December 08, 2015

The Imperial Collapse Playbook

[Il libretto del Collasso Imperiale]
[Das Imperiale Kollaps – Drehbuch]
[Manuel pratique de l’effondrement impérial]

[This is a rerun, which seems timely given the recent American efforts to poison relations between Turkey and Russia. The shoot-down of the Russian jet was clearly a well-poisoning exercise either directly ordered or, at the very least, approved by the Pentagon. In a future blog post, I will explain why this same old strategy isn't going to produce the same old results the Americans have come to expect.]

Some people enjoy having the Big Picture laid out in front of them—the biggest possible—on what is happening in the world at large, and I am happy to oblige. The largest development of 2014 is, very broadly, this: the Anglo-imperialists are finally being forced out of Eurasia. How can we tell? Well, here is the Big Picture—the biggest I could find. I found it thanks to Nikolai Starikov and a recent article of his.

Now, let's first define our terms. By Anglo-imperialists I mean the combination of Britain and the United States. The latter took over for the former as it failed, turning it into a protectorate. Now the latter is failing too, and there are no new up-and-coming Anglo-imperialists to take over for it. But throughout this process their common playbook had remained the same: pseudoliberal pseudocapitalism for the insiders and military domination and economic exploitation for everyone else. Much more specifically, their playbook always called for a certain strategem to be executed whenever their plans to dominate and exploit any given country finally fail. On their way out, they do what they can to compromise and weaken the entity they leave behind, by inflicting a permanently oozing and festering political wound. “Poison all the wells” is the last thing on their pre-departure checklist.

• When the British got tossed out of their American Colonies, they did all they could, using a combination of import preferences and British “soft power,” to bolster the plantation economy of the American South, helping set it up as a sort of anti-United States, and the eventual result was the American Civil War.

• When the British got tossed out of Ireland, they set up Belfast as a sort of anti-Ireland, with much blood shed as a result.

• When the British got tossed out of the Middle East, they set up the State of Israel, then the US made it into its own protectorate, and it has been poisoning regional politics ever since. (Thanks to Kristina for pointing this out in the comments.)

• When the British got tossed out of India, they set up Pakistan, as a sort of anti-India, precipitating a nasty hot war, followed by a frozen conflict over Kashmir.

• When the US lost China to the Communists, they evacuated the Nationalists to Taiwan, and set it up as a sort of anti-China, and even gave it China's seat at the United Nations.

The goal is always the same: if they can't have the run of the place, they make sure that nobody else can either, by setting up a conflict scenario that nobody there can ever hope to resolve. And so if you see Anglo-imperialists going out of their way and spending lots of money to poison the political well somewhere in the world, you can be sure that they are on their way out. Simply put, they don't spend lots of money to set up intractable problems for themselves to solve—it's always done for the benefit of others.

Fast-forward to 2014, and what we saw was the Anglo-imperialist attempt to set up Ukraine as a sort of anti-Russia. They took a Slavic, mostly Russian-speaking country and spent billions (that's with a “b”) of dollars corrupting its politics to make the Ukrainians hate the Russians. For a good while an average Ukrainian could earn a month's salary simply by turning up for an anti-Russian demonstration in Kiev, and it was said that nobody in Ukraine goes to protests free of charge; it's all paid for by the US State Department and associated American NGOs. The result was what we saw this year: a bloody coup, and a civil war marked by numerous atrocities. Ukraine is in the midst of economic collapse with power plants out of coal and lights going off everywhere, while at the same time the Ukrainians are being drafted into the army and indoctrinated to want to go fight against “the Muscovites.”

But, if you notice, things didn't go quite as planned. First, Russia succeeded in making a nice little example of self-determination in the form of Crimea: if it worked for Kosovo, why can't it work for Crimea? Oh, the Anglo-imperialist establishment wishes to handle these things on a case-by-case basis, and in this case it doesn't approve? Well, that would be a double-standard, wouldn't it? World, please take note: when the West talks about justice and human rights, that's just noise.

Next, the Russians provided some amount of support, including weapons, volunteers and humanitarian aid, to Ukraine's eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk, which declared themselves People's Republics and successfully fought Ukraine's so-called “anti-terrorist operation” to a stalemate and an imperfect, precarious cease-fire. Very significantly, Russia absolutely refused to get involved militarily, has withheld official recognition of these republics, has refused to consider breaking up Ukraine, and continues to insist on national dialogue and a peace process even as the bullets fly. According to Putin, Ukraine must be maintained as “a contiguous political space.” Thus, the Russians have responded to the Anglo-imperialists' setting up of an anti-Russia in the form of Ukraine by setting up an anti-Ukraine in the form of DPR and LPR, thereby shunting the Anglo-imperialist attempt to provoke a war between Ukraine and Russia into a civil war within Ukraine.

You might also notice that the Anglo-imperialists have been getting very, very angry. They have been doing everything they can to vilify Russia, comparing Putin to Hitler and so on. This is because for them it's all about the money, and they didn't get what they paid for. What the Anglo-imperialists were paying for in corrupting Ukraine's politics was a ring-side seat at a fight between Ukraine and Russia. And what they got instead is a two-legged stool at a bar-room brawl between Eastern and Western Ukraine. Eastern Ukraine accounts for a quarter of the Ukrainian economy, produces most of the coal that had formerly kept the lights on in the rest of the country, and contains most of the industry that had made Ukraine an industrialized nation. Western Ukraine is centered on the unhappy little rump of Galicia, where the political soil is so fertile for growing neo-Nazis. So, paying billions to watch a bunch of Ukrainians fight each other inconclusively while Russia gets to play peacemaker is not what the Anglo-imperialists wanted, and they are absolutely livid about it. If they don't get the war they paid for PDQ, they will simply cut their losses, pack up and leave, and then do what they always do, which is pretend that the country in question doesn't exist, which, the way things are going in the Ukraine, it barely will.

Note that leaving, and then pretending that a place doesn't exist, is something the Anglo-imperialists have been doing a lot lately. When they left Iraq, they did succeed in setting up a sort of anti-Iraq in the form of Iraqi Kurdistan, but that all blew up in their face. Their attempts to set up an anti-Syria or an anti-Libya died in their infancy, and they don't seem to have any plan at all with regard to Afghanistan, unless it is to repeat every single blunder the Soviets made there as carefully and completely as possible.

What's more, it's starting to look like they are about to get kicked out of Eurasia altogether. Most of the major Eurasian players—China, Russia, India, Iran, much of Central Asia—are cementing their ties around the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to which the United States isn't even admitted as an observer. As for the European Union, the current crop of EU politicians is very much bought and will be paid for upon retirement by the Anglo-imperialists, but the only reason they are still in power is that there are lots of older voters in Western Europe, and older people tend to cling to what they know even after it stops working—for them or, especially, for their kids. If it was up to the young people, the Anglo-imperialists would face open rebellion. In fact, the trends in voting patterns show that their departure from the region is a matter of time.

Here is a preview of possible coming attractions. On their way out, the Anglo-imperialists will of course try to set up an anti-Europe, and the obvious choice for that is Britain. Of all the European nations, it is the most heavily manipulated by their Anglo cousins from across the pond. It would take minimal effort for them to hurt Britain economically, then launch a propaganda campaign to redirect the blame for the bad economy toward the continent. They wouldn't even have to hire translators for their propaganda—a simple “spelling-chequer” (or whatever) would suffice. And so, to make sure that their efforts to provoke a large-scale, hugely destructive, festering conflict between Britain and Europe fail, Europe would do well to set up an anti-Britain within Britain.

And the obvious choice for an anti-Britain is of course Scotland, where the recent independence referendum failed because of... the recalcitrance of older voters. A dividing line between the Anglo empire and Eurasia running through the English Channel/La Manche would be a disaster for Europe and moving it somewhere west of Bermuda would pose a formidable challenge. On the other hand, suppose that line ran along Hadrian's Wall, with the traditionally combative and ornery Scots, armed with the remnants of North Sea oil and gas, aligning themselves with the Continent, while England remains an ever-so-obedient vassal of the Anglo-imperialists? That would reduce the intercontinental conflict to what Americans like to call a “pissing contest”: not worth the high price of admission. Yes, there would be some strong words between the two sides, and some shoving and shouting outside of pubs, and even some black eyes and loose teeth should diplomacy fail, but that should be the extent of the damage. That I see as the best-case outcome.

So that's the big picture I see heading into 2015, which I am sure will be a most tumultuous year. Not to make a prediction as to timing (don't worry, you won't ever get one out of me!) but 2015 could be the year the Anglo-imperialist franchise finally starts shutting down in obvious ways. We know it will have to shut down eventually, because failing all the time is not conducive to its survival. The bonus question is, what sort of anti-America will these parasites set up inside America before they abandon their host and scatter to their fortified compounds in undisclosed locations around the world? Or will they not even bother, and just provoke a war of all against all?

I would think that they would at least try to leverage their expensively engineered red/blue divide within the United States. This fake cultural/political divide, with all the pseudoliberal/pseudoconservative indoctrination and university- and church-based brainwashing that put it in place, cost them a pretty penny. It was engineered to produce the appearance of choice at election-time while making sure that there isn't any. But could it not be pressed into service in some more extreme manner? How about leveraging it to organize some sort of rabidly homophobic racist fundamentalist separatist enclave somewhere down south? Or perhaps one somewhere in the north, where zoophilia is de rigeur while heterosexual intercourse requires a special permit from a committee stocked with graduates in women's studies? Now, fight, you idiots! Don't you see how well that could work in practice? Would they waste such a nice opportunity to set up a system of controlled mayhem? I think not!

I leave all of that up to you to imagine.

Happy New Year!

17 comments:

NowhereMan said...

Great post Dmitry. I read this yesterday off of a link at Kunstler's blog. Could not have possibly been more insightful! American strategists have apparently dispensed with all pretense of subtlety these days, so it's reasonable to conclude that they sense an end game in sight. The recent San Bernardino "event" officially opened the door on the "ISIS is attacking us right here in the Homeland" meme, so 2016 is shaping up to be a whole new level of insanity here in the land of the clinically insane, especially considering we'll see it out with a new King or Queen selected and awaiting coronation in early 2017. I'm expecting another false flag crisis or two in the interim, all instantly solved by our "protectors" of course, albeit requiring further draconian security and/or financial measures and sacrifice from the ignorant masses. It should all be as fun to watch unfold as it will be painful to live with the ensuing consequences. I can hardly wait!

Fred said...

Dmitry--As always another great post. Enjoyed and learned from it even more this time around. Thank you!

NowhereMan--A great commentary from you. I am in agreement with all you said and the interesting near-future times ahead of us living in the belly of the beast. In case you haven't come across it, I thought you'd enjoy the article at the link below, posted on Zero Hedge yesterday...(not sure how to make it a hyperlink/click-able??!!)

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-07/george-orwell-edward-bernays-perpetual-war

Unknown said...

1st paragraph: 2014, did you mean 2015?
Penultimate paragraph, 2015, did you mean 2016?

Interesting as always. Many thanks.
Phil
Andover, UK

My donkey said...

Provoking a war of all against all would take minimal effort because we're already at the doorstep.

The American populace has always been too stupid to resist participating in the divide-and-conquer game played by the ruling class, but at least they used to have enough sense to get paid for it.

Whereas in 1886, railroad tycoon Jay Gould said, "I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half", nowadays a wage-slave is apt to respond, "You want to pay me to thrash my neighbor? Don't be daft; I'll pay *you* for that honor!"

And so, if we end up with a nation of dolts enthusiastically beating each other to death while the ruling class laughs and clinks glasses, we'll richly deserve it.

NowhereMan said...

Fred,

Great link! That's for that. Funny how all of the means being currently exploited have been known and well documented the world over for so long, and yet we Americans are just waking up to their grim truths. I guess you have to live it to really understand it, something we're about to get an even heavier dose of in the next few years.

Frog said...

Dmitri,

Thank you for the good read. Here is a question for you. How does Turkey fit in? Are they playing their own tune or are they on the Anglo leash? Or both? Why shoot down the Russian fighter, what advantage was that to them? Any comments on Turkey's role in all this?

Thanks,
LJJ

Rhisiart Gwilym said...

Dmitry, Ghassan Kadi, guesting at Saker, has a somewhat different view of Erdogan's shoot-down of the Russian Sukhoi. I confess I lean to your view that the Pentagon and/or the CIA must have known ahead of time, and must have at least encouraged it, if not initiated it. But Kadi's view could be accommodated on the assumption that the White House gang didn't know, and didn't like it when it happened. As the US empire breaks down, it becomes clearer all the time that the whole Federal administration is breaking - even more than traditionally - into little rival fiefdoms with no common control imposed from above. The sort of chaos that history impels you to expect, as empires crash.

Just my guesstimate. :)

Rhisiart Gwilym said...

And another interesting view, from Pepe Escobar, via Russia Insider -

http://russia-insider.com/en/what-erdogans-endgame-syria/ri11711

NowhereMan said...

@ Phil: I believe this was originally posted at the end of 2014, which makes it just all that much more amazing. Some first rate prognostication going on here, although, given the US's well-documented tendencies (all of this stuff is documented in the book Confessions of an Economic Hitman) , it all seems pretty obvious in retrospect. What we're seeing unfold in Europe and the US now is merely what the US has been doing in SE Asia, and Central and South America for over a century now, it just looks a lot different when its happening TO us, as opposed to hearing about it happening to someone else.

Zoltar said...

Autopsies of starvation victims reveal that in extremis a human body, having extracted resources from every other available location, will even begin to digest the heart in order to maintain brain function for as long as possible.

It is clear that the parasites you describe, after devouring the Third World and Europe, have nearly exhausted their repast on their own nominal homeland in the United States.

Private islands and personal armies may provide temporary security, but isolations has its disadvantages. After their fragile supply lines of foie gras and vintage Champagne have broken down, one suspects that these creatures will eat their children before their avarice leads to their own demise.

Unknown said...

What shows me the US decline is the one aspect of America that has been upheld as our greatest strength. The US Military. In the last decade in particular, the US Defense Industry has taken to corruption is a major way. The new engineers and mangers in the defense industries are not like the old efficient dedicated designers. Nope! This new bunch are all about squeezing maximum profits form each weapons system, while at the same time being terrible engineers. Look at the latest and most expensive US Fighter Project. A foolish plan to design one plane to do all mission in the entire military!
It is a trillion dollar program and an utter failure. No nation can afford to both waste a trillion dollars, and NOT have a viable set of combat aircraft. It is the same with other weapons, too expensive, too complex, to easy to defeat by electronic countermeasures.
The greed of US defense industry is about to de-fang the once powerful US military.
Look at Afghanistan! The US spent hundred billion dollars to train vast special forces, and given the chance, all those elites and special units failed utterly to even make a dent in Taliban control.
The US Military is fast being outfitted with expensive weapons of dubious value. A decline brought on by unbridled greed, officers join corporations and officers by dubious weapons from those same corporations. Conflict of greedy interest does not get prosecuted.
Greed will undo America! I believe greed is undo the markets. The banks. The schools. The health care. Now too the Military! We have truly undone ourselves ourselves!

NowhereMan said...

@ james cole: I'm a retired US military vet (2003) myself who, as fate might have it, got detailed out as an operational unit budget analyst (yes, they decided that costs were important enough to track and skimp on all the way down to the unit level, and yet, still not important enough to hire a professionally trained analyst for the service!) for my final 7 years of service. I can attest to the corporatization of the military at least that far back, although I know it extends much further.

By my final year I was developing databases to track individual protective equipment purchases by person, while also managing the US Bank Government Purchase Card (VISA) payments for those items and much more, while also managing personal Government Travel Card (VISA) activity for every member of a 1200 person unit. Even then, and I'm sure it has only grown exponentially worse in the interim, the system was a snake eating it's tail.

And of course now that I'm retired and have since BECOME a fully trained, accredited, and working professional budget analyst for another branch of the US public/private monstrosity, I see it all for what it was and is. And you are correct in all your assertions. The rot within the current system can only be described as a terminal, malignant cancer in its advanced stages, with palliative care being the rule, and planned system shutdowns either already deployed, or ready for same.

And all for what? The very subject of this post. The not so gradual hollowing out of the nation state and the people it represents in favor of a supra-nationalist oligarchic elite - currently primarily headquartered in and enabled by the US - who suck the life blood out of everything they see.

DeVaul said...

I am now partial to the theory that Turkey is no longer playing by any rules other than its own. The Sultan must have been greatly disappointed when NATO did not rush to his defense, or rather the defense of his oil smuggling operation and "family business", and also when several members refused to publicly support his right to shoot down Russian aircraft. The Sultan must have believed that this treaty with NATO was a military one that could be invoked automatically, but found out that it is instead an "optional" one that can be turned down by other members.

Hence, the invasion of Iraq by Turkish troops even while the US tries to crowd the skies above Syria with warplanes from every nation, thus negating the effect of the Russian S-400 system. The more planes, the more questions, and the more hesitation. Does Russia want to shoot down a German plane? Probably not. "Whose plane is that? We don't know yet. Hold your fire." While US planes are bombing IS (or just outside their camp), a couple of Italian or French planes will veer off and drop some bombs on the Syrian Army.

US Response? 1) Denial, 2) Denial, 3) Russian planes did it, 4) Coalition planes may have done it, but it was a mistake due to lack of Syrian cooperation or proximity of Syrian troops to IS, and on and on and on. Remember the bombing of the MSF hospital in Afghanistan? Same narrative, different characters.

I believe Merkel, a woman few Americans even know, got her face on Time magazine because she consented to sending several German warplanes to help crowd the skies over Syria and Iraq. What other purpose could they serve? None that I know of. Cameron has done the same thing, sending British tornados to Syria to create utter confusion in the skies above. The desperate manner in which he bulldozed this plan through parliament tells me that this is a coordinated effort by the US to use as many different NATO warplanes as possible to discourage the Russians from defending Syrian soldiers, who may now be sitting ducks with no air cover.

These are desperate actions by a dying empire, and are designed to up the ante to all out war. Putin may have to accept that nothing but poisoned wells and total anarchy will be left on his southern border. I would start building a wall across the Caucasus region if I were him.

If you can't defeat religious fanatics, at least keep them out of your country.

NowhereMan said...

@ Devaul: I would only add that any supposed "religious fanatics" are mostly manufactured/inflamed by you know who. When it comes to "the Great Satan," the 1979-1980 Iranian students had it exactly right. We in the US have not only met the devil and shook his gnarly hand, but crawled in bed with him and raised a thriving brood in the interim. God, or somebody, help us all!

Larkin said...

Apparently the "Project of the New American Century" is a serious document that is a blueprint for the plan forward. Publish in the mid-nineties and signed by such people as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and Robert Kagan, (Victoria Nuland's husband).

It proposes that America immediately take the initiate to secure economic and military dominance over the entire world before any other power can rise to the level of competition. In short they called it, "Full Spectrum Dominance."

I have shown this doc to people that I had respected in the past and they would say. "Don't be silly, they don't really mean that.."

What is interesting is that even though we have had a democratic administration for almost 8 years, we see many supporters of the PNAC doc or "neo-cons" working in high placed positions specifically in the State department. The most notable is the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Nuland who help orchestrate the Ukrainian coup and the widening rift between Russia.

Here in the US and specifically on cable news, much is made about the Russian support and reincorporation of Crimea. It is portrayed as naked aggression almost rising to the point of US intervention.

A right wing coup in Kiev and NATO moving forward to threatens the Russian naval base in Crimea that defends all of South Russia.

To quote Nom Chomsky, "Russia has a case."

There is another quote from many decades ago that is ringing in my ears concerning the neo-con aggressive initiatives towards Russia,

"You only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."
Adolph Hitler

Alex said...

Posts like this are why I hope you never leave us, Dmitry.

Growing up in the USA about all I was taught about the civil war was slaves, something something Lincoln wore a tall nat, something something speech written on the back of an envelope something.

This is why history shows are so popular here. We finally get a little of the forbidden fruit. But then role of the British isn't mentioned.

mh505 said...

Just FYI-
the German translation dated 10.12. is of rather low quality