[P2P-F] Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) US imperialism stumbles towards collapse, blasting away (Dmitry Orlov)

Sun Apr 5 15:28:37 CEST 2015

worth reading on 'empire'

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Orsan <orsan1234 at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 2:29 PM
Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: [Debate-List] (Fwd) US imperialism stumbles
towards collapse, blasting away (Dmitry Orlov)
To: "<networkedlabour at lists.contrast.org>" <
networkedlabour at lists.contrast.org>

Orlov forgets though mentioning the general-systemic and transnational
dynamics i.e. class struggles, as well as other feedback-loops, so to
speak, that keep re-create the pattern :

March 31, 2015
 Dmitry Orlov License to Kill
   <JakubRozalski.jpeg>
<http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uTKjOwFvXl0/VRlzyT8RX4I/AAAAAAAAGTs/unvPX6w9Dls/s1600/JakubRozalski.jpeg>
 Jakub
Rozalski  The story is the same every time: some nation, due to a
confluence of lucky circumstances, becomes powerful—much more powerful than
the rest—and, for a time, is dominant. But the lucky circumstances, which
often amount to no more than a few advantageous quirks of geology, be it
Welsh coal or West Texas oil, in due course come to an end. In the
meantime, the erstwhile superpower becomes corrupted by its own power.

As the endgame approaches, those still nominally in charge of the
collapsing empire resort to all sorts of desperate measures—all except one:
they will refuse to ever consider the fact that their imperial superpower
is at an end, and that they should change their ways accordingly. George
Orwell once offered an excellent explanation for this phenomenon: as the
imperial end-game approaches, it becomes a matter of imperial
self-preservation to breed a special-purpose ruling class—one that is
incapable of understanding that the end-game is approaching. Because, you
see, if they had an inkling of what's going on, they wouldn't take their
jobs seriously enough to keep the game going for as long as possible.

The approaching imperial collapse can be seen in the ever worsening results
the empire gets for its imperial efforts. After World War II, the US was
able to do a respectable job helping to rebuild Germany, along with the
rest of western Europe. Japan also did rather well under US tutelage, as
did South Korea after the end of fighting on the Korean peninsula. With
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, all of which were badly damaged by the US, the
results were significantly worse: Vietnam was an outright defeat, Cambodia
lived through a period of genocide, while amazingly resilient Laos—the most
heavily bombed country on the planet—recovered on its own.

The first Gulf War went even more badly: fearful of undertaking a ground
offensive in Iraq, the US stopped short of its regular practice of toppling
the government and installing a puppet regime there, and left it in limbo
for a decade. When the US did eventually invade, it succeeded—after killing
countless civilians and destroying much of the infrastructure—in leaving
behind a dismembered corpse of a country.

Similar results have been achieved in other places where the US saw it fit
to get involved: Somalia, Libya and, most recently, Yemen. Let's not even
mention Afghanistan, since all empires have failed to achieve good results
there. So the trend is unmistakable: whereas at its height the empire
destroyed in order to rebuild the world in its own image, as it nears its
end it destroys simply for the sake of destruction, leaving piles of
corpses and smoldering ruins in its wake.

Another unmistakeable trend has to do with the efficacy of spending money
on “defense” (which, in the case of the US, should be redefined as
“offense”). Having a lavishly endowed military can sometimes lead to
success, but here too something has shifted over time. The famous American
can-do spirit that was evident to all during World War II, when the US
dwarfed the rest of the world with its industrial might, is no more. Now,
more and more, military spending itself is the goal—never mind what it
achieves.

And what it achieves is the latest F-35 jet fighter that can't fly; the
latest aircraft carrier that can't launch planes without destroying them if
they are fitted with the auxiliary tanks they need to fly combat missions;
the most technologically advanced AEGIS destroyer that can be taken out of
commission by a single unarmed Russian jet carrying a basket of electronic
warfare equipment, and another aircraft carrier that can be frightened out
of deep water and forced to anchor by a few Russian submarines out on
routine patrol.

But the Americans like their weapons, and they like handing them out as a
show of support. But more often than not these weapons end up in the wrong
hands: the ones they gave to Iraq are now in the hands of ISIS; the ones
they gave to the Ukrainian nationalists have been sold to the Syrian
government; the ones they gave to the government in Yemen is now in the
hands of the Houthis who recently overthrew it. And so the efficacy of
lavish military spending has dwindled too. At some point it may become more
efficient to modify the US Treasury printing presses to blast bundles of US
dollars in the general direction of the enemy.

With the strategy of “destroying in order to create” no longer viable, but
with the blind ambition to still try to prevail everywhere in the world
somehow still part of the political culture, all that remains is murder.
The main tool of foreign policy becomes political assassination: be it
Saddam Hussein, or Muammar Qaddafi, or Slobodan Milošević, or Osama bin
Laden, or any number of lesser targets, the idea is to simply kill them.

While aiming for the head of an organization is a favorite technique, the
general populace gets is share of murder too. How many funerals and wedding
parties have been taken out by drone strikes? I don't know that anyone in
the US really knows, but I am sure that those whose relatives were killed
do remember, and will remember for the next few centuries at least. This
tactic is generally not conducive to creating a durable peace, but it is a
good tactic for perpetuating and escalating conflict. But that's now an
acceptable goal, because it creates the rationale for increased military
spending, making it possible to breed more chaos.

Recently a retired US general went on television to declare that what's
needed to turn around the situation in the Ukraine is to simply “start
killing Russians.” The Russians listened to that, marveled at his idiocy,
and then went ahead and opened a criminal case against him. Now this
general will be unable to travel to an ever-increasing number of countries
around the world for fear of getting arrested and deported to Russia to
stand trial.

This is largely a symbolic gesture, but non-symbolic non-gestures of a
preventive nature are sure to follow. You see, my fellow space travelers,
murder happens to be illegal. In most jurisdictions, inciting others to
murder also happens to be illegal. Americans have granted themselves the
license to kill without checking to see whether perhaps they might be
exceeding their authority. We should expect, then, that as their power
trickles away, their license to kill will be revoked, and they find
themselves reclassified from global hegemons to mere murderers.

As empires collapse, they turn inward, and subject their own populations to
the same ill treatment to which they subjected others. Here, America is
unexceptional: the number of Americans being murdered by their own police,
with minimal repercussions for those doing the killing, is quite stunning.
When Americans wonder who their enemy really is, they need look no further.

But that is only the beginning: the precedent has already been set for
deploying US troops on US soil. As law and order break down in more and
more places, we will see more and more US troops on the streets of cities
in the US, spreading death and destruction just like they did in Iraq or in
Afghanistan. The last license to kill to be revoked will be the license to
kill ourselves.

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