{"id":16500,"date":"2022-07-21T12:23:32","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T16:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/?p=16500"},"modified":"2022-07-21T12:23:32","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T16:23:32","slug":"us-empire-in-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/?p=16500","title":{"rendered":"US Empire in Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States is an empire. It has 800 military bases\u00a0around the world<\/a>\u00a0. More than\u00a0$840 billion<\/a>\u00a0has been set aside for the latest Pentagon budget, a sum bigger than the military expenditure of the next\u00a0nine countries combined.<\/a>\u00a0U.S. military operations, whether overt or covert, have devastated more than eighty countries since the end of World War II and killed more than 30 million people. And these numbers are likely undercounts since the U.S. national security state is far from transparent.<\/p>\n

The American Empire is protected by a series of lies otherwise known as the ideology of American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism has normalized imperialist violence by rendering it nothing more than a crusade for \u201cdemocracy,\u201d \u201cliberty,\u201d and \u201cfreedom.\u201d Innocence is bestowed upon the American empire through the creation of \u201cenemies\u201d and scapegoats. Brutal crimes against humanity such as torture were sanctioned by the threat of \u201cterrorism\u201d that the U.S. created in Afghanistan beginning in 1979. Military encirclement and sanctions have since been justified by a never-ending quest to defeat \u201cauthoritarianism,\u201d communism, and other threats to the so-called \u201crules-based international order.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deeper the world moves into the 21st century, the clearer it becomes that the American Empire has bitten off more than it can chew. U.S capitalism is in decline and its economic influence over the world is shrinking by the decade. The \u201cend of history\u201d declared after the fall of the Soviet Union is being challenged by the rise of China\u2019s modern socialist economy and the pursuit of sovereign governance in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The American Empire offers neither investment nor prosperity. China and Russia are leading a multipolar world where peace, stability, and prosperity for the vast majority of humanity is prioritized over the narrow interests of U.S. hegemony.<\/p>\n

The American Empire has responded with a violent campaign to suffocate multipolarity in its crib. Warmongering servants of the duopoly have ripped off whatever clothes remained to conceal its violent interests from the masses of people. On July 12th, former Trump national security advisor John Bolton told CNN that he personally\u00a0\u201cplanned coups,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0making him an expert judge on the January 6th 2020 incident on the Capitol. When pressed by Jake Tapper, Bolton responded that he would not go into specifics. He did mention that his memoir included information about the role he played in facilitating a crisis in Venezuela to remove President Nicholas Maduro from power.<\/p>\n

Of course, Bolton is a known neocon hawk who has published many op-eds calling for the\u00a0bombing of Iran<\/a>\u00a0and other acts of war and aggression. But warmongering isn\u2019t reserved for the most hawkish elements of the GOP-side of the duopoly. President Joe Biden has demonstrated a willingness to publicly express the most dangerous ambitions of the American Empire, whether in his statement that\u00a0\u201cPutin cannot remain in power\u201d<\/a>\u00a0last March or the three times that he openly affirmed a commitment to use U.S. military force to \u201cdefend\u201d Taiwan from China. The same week that Bolton made clear his role as a coup plotter, Biden visited Israel where he verbalized equally aggressive remarks about the U.S.\u2019s relationship with its fellow settler colonial entity.<\/p>\n

Yonit Levi of Israel\u2019s\u00a0Channel 12 News<\/a>\u00a0asked Biden about the gap between Democrats who call Israel an apartheid state and his administration. Biden answered with the following:<\/p>\n

There are a few of them. I think they\u2019re wrong. I think they\u2019re making a mistake. Israel is a democracy. Israel is our ally. Israel is a friend. And I think that I make no apologies. We\u2019ve provided four\u2013 my administration, $4 billion, plus a billion for Iron Dome. And we\u2019re working on a laser project that will be able to replace Iron Dome. It\u2019s overwhelming our interest that Israel be stable.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Israel began another\u00a0bombing campaign of Gaza<\/a>\u00a0the day after Biden left Israel on July 15th. By then, Biden had already touched down in Saudi Arabia to encourage the Gulf monarchy to increase oil production and reject business ties\u00a0with Russia and China.<\/a><\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s maneuvers with Israel and Saudi Arabia are yet another slap in the face to Democratic Party voters. A majority of Democrats want the United States to increase support for Palestine and more than 99 percent fail to rank Israel\u00a0as a top ally of the United States<\/a>\u00a0. Nearly two-thirds of Democratic Party voters oppose U.S.\u00a0arms sales to Saudi Arabia<\/a>\u00a0due to its brutal war on Yemen and leading role in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. While Biden feigned criticism of Saudi Arabia to the press following the trip,\u00a0his fist bump<\/a>\u00a0with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman received widespread condemnation on social media for sending a different message entirely.<\/p>\n

The American Empire is not in the business of permanent strategies, just permanent interests. These interests have been met by a myriad of crises that have caused the political overseers of the empire to shed whatever clothes they had left to conceal their endless warmongering. Public confidence in the duopoly is at its lowest point. Mainstream corporate news media is widely distrusted. Economic instability fueled by endless austerity and war has chipped away at the already questionable legitimacy of the American Empire.<\/p>\n

War is an extension of politics through state violence. State violence at all levels is a form of social control meant to reproduce and strengthen a given social order. Arming reactionary regimes such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, waging proxy wars, and militarizing the planet to build toward a hot conflict with Russia and China are all expressions of the American Empire\u2019s addiction to state violence, apartheid, and regime change. Peace is an impossibility under such an arrangement. While a naked American Empire is indeed on its death bed, only a people\u2019s movement can rid the planet of the enduring dangers that its rotting carcass holds for humanity.<\/p>\n

(from BAR, July 20, by Danny Haiphong)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States is an empire. It has 800 military bases\u00a0around the world\u00a0. More than\u00a0$840 billion\u00a0has been set aside for the latest Pentagon budget, a sum bigger than the military expenditure of the next\u00a0nine countries combined.\u00a0U.S. military operations, whether overt or covert, have devastated more than eighty countries since the end of World War II […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-militarized-foreign-policy"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16501,"href":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16500\/revisions\/16501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ohiopeacecouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}