트럼프 정권들어서고 나서...미국의 외교정책에 많은 변화가 잇는 듯 보입니다.
변화가 시도 되고 잇다는 것은 사실입니다...
민주당 정권이 해 왓던 짓과 대비해 보면 더욱 그렇습니다...
그런데...이것이 근본적인 변화인가??
즉..갈보가 죶 빨기를 멈 췃다 하여....조신한 여자가 되기 위한 변화의 시작인가?
아님 다른 죶을 발견한 것인가??
당연히 후자라는 것이지요...
아래글은 미국의 외교 정책을 이해 할수 잇는 좋은 글이다는 생각에 카피 햇습니다.
영어이고 또 길긴 합니다.......
뭐 어짭니까??
영어 되는 분들은 함 읽어 보쇼요..
괜쟎은 내용이 많이 나옵니다..
The Empire Rebrands: Foreign Policy Under Trump 2.0
As we watch the Trump administration’s foreign policy take shape, I am reminded of former President Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech. That was the one where he promised that the US was seeking “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.”(중국이 모택통 혁명부터 줄기차게 유지해온 외교 전략이기도 합니다....그들은 자신들의 이런 외교의 원칙은 마치 거대한 혁명이라도 하는 것 처럼 나발 거리지만,,중국이 하면 음흉한 중국의 세계 전략이 깔려 잇다고 하지요.....지가 그러니..남도 그럴것이다고 생각하는 것은 너무 당연합니다) It was only six months into his presidency when we could still lie to ourselves that the Bush years were a just particularly abhorrent aberration.
There were shifts underway back in 2009 although they certainly didn’t have anything to do with mutual interest and respect. As Obama delivered his lies in Cairo, Obamaians were just gassing up the drones.
(먼로 이후의 미국의 외교정책의 실제 모습입니다..겉으로는 상호의 존중과 이해을 이야기 하지만 항상 뒤로는 뽑아 먹을 꺼리만 생각 햇지요..
사실 제국주의 이후의 강대국 외교의 성격이 본래 그렇습니다.....늘 반복되어 이야기 하지만, 정도가 문제라는 것이지요..)
And the US shifted from invasion and occupation to more clandestine operations of destabilization, targeted killings, “leading from behind,” and humanitarian regime change operations. They helped craft the international liberal order often utilizing the human rights tools like LGTBQ+ rights, feminism and of course democracy to pursue the same goals as Bush the Younger. but in a more “woke” manner.
그들은 항상 자유와 민주주의 그리고 인권을 앞세워 다가 옵니다... LGTBQ+ rights 나 페미니즘도 석어서 던져 주지요..
늘 반복하여 이야기 하지만,,,자유 민주주의 인권 성 평등 따위는 그 자체로는 나쁠것이 없습니다.
문제는.. 그런 먼진 말들이 더 좋은 세상을 만들어 내는 도구라기 보다는 항상 다른 사악한 목적으로 악용된다는 것이지요.
공자는..춘추 전국시대 라는 혼란과 파괴의 시대를 살앗습니다..
그는....무엇을 어떻게 하면 이런 혼란과 파괴를 안정과 평화로 바꿀 수 잇는가 를 고민 하엿고..
이른바..3강 5륜이라는 조화와 공생의 틀을 제시 하엿습니다.
그것을 꼭 지키라는 것이 아니고...이런것이 사람들을 덜 싸우게 하는 방법일 수 잇겟다고 생각햇던 것이지요.
그렇게 질서를 세움으로써 공생과 공영이 가능 하다고 생각햇습니다...
공자가 생각 햇던 것은 서구인들의 자유, 평등이 구현되는 유토피와 따위완 근본에서 달랏고..
비록 그것이 모순되거나 완전하지 못 하더라도,,안정되고 평화로울 수 잇다면 충분 하다는 일종의 현실과의 타협이엇지요..
그런데 이 공자의 사상이 지배체제의 지배 철학으로 받아 들여 졋을때...3강5륜은 괴물이 된 것이지요.
조화와 공생의 수단이 아닌..지배와 구속의 수단으로 변한 것이고....이것이 오히려 조화와 공생의 방해물이 되어 버린 것입니다.
예수 또한 평화로운 세상을 생각햇고, 사랑이란 수단을 제시 햇습니다..
그런데 이 예수주의 또한 꼭 같은 과정을 거처 국교화 됨으로써 더 이상의 평화의 수단은 되지 못하고
적을 만들고 사람을 죽이고 지배 질서를 유지 하는 최악의 도구로 사용 되엇습니다..
인류사에 예수을 믿는자들 만큼 많은 사람을 죽이고, 문명을 파괴하고, 비 인간적인 집단들은 존재 하지 않습니다.
페스트도 징기스칸의 약탈도 예수을 믿는자들의 파괴와 약탈과 사살과는 감히 비교조할 할 수 없습니다.
민주주의라고 ...이런 것에서 예외 일 수 잇는 것인가???
우린 이제는 좀더 차분하고 심각하게 이런 것을 고민 해야 하는 환경에서 살고 잇습니다.
Yet this mode of empire had outlived its usefulness.(제국주의는 자본주의의 타락 물 입니다...제국주의도 자본주의도 또 자본주의와 괴를 같이 하여 독 버섯 처럼 음지에서 자라 양지 식물로 변이한 민주주의 또한 그렇습니다...이들은 모두 자신들의 내용년수 보다 훨씬 더 오래 살고 잇습니다.......그러니 삐것 거릴 수 밖에 없습니다) A growing number of states are following Russia’s lead and cracking down on foreign funding of NGOs. There is the inability to bludgeon European voters upset over deteriorating living standards into submission using moralistic certitude. And the dam broke in the US where Trump — with the backing of the majority of plutocrats — is now dismantling this machinery. What will take its place?
Now there are actual shifts taking place under Trump (attempting to get out of Ukraine and dump it on the hapless Europeans, actualizing the long-planned pivot to Asia, a renewed emphasis on shipping lanes, cracking down on DEI and elements of the Blob that hounded him during first term and beyond), but all signs are that the underlying goals of empire remain: that US capital controls the world and can extract rent from every corner of the globe. This isn’t changing based on an election despite Obama’s repeated assurances that “the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice.”
A week ago I wrote about the repackaging of the empire sales pitch to the American working class. Here I’d like to focus on how the Trump rebrand is playing out across the world.
***
So what of the Trump rebrand? So much of the focus has recently been on Ukraine and Russia — not unjustifiably so considering the stakes — but regardless of whether Washington and Moscow can find a way to overcome the US long history of non-agreement capability(미국의 합의 하지 않는 능력- 깽판 근성...미국은 합의를 만들기도 어려운 대상이지만 또 미국은 합의를 지킨 역사도 없습니다), American efforts at global hegemony aren’t going to die quietly.
For one, there is evidence that one of the drivers behind seeking rapprochement with Russia is to make Washington’s task of taking on China slightly more feasible. There’s also the simple fact that the US has little other choice. They’ve lost Project Ukraine.
Any change in marketing is more likely an indication that the plutocrats and their think tanks believe the “woke” empire reached its sell-by-date(판매기한 경과), and it’s time to rebrand. More than an acceptance of multipolarity, this is probably more a reflection of disappointment with some of the returns from the Biden administration — especially on the Russia collapse bet. So while the plutocrats might be forced to accept that running an unwinnable proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is stupid strategy, which it is (as well as a human tragedy), and Trump is tasked with getting out of the mess, that doesn’t herald a seachange in how US plutocrats view the world.(즉 갈보가 지금까지 빨고 잇던 죶 대가리 빨기를 중지 한 것은 ...새로운 삶을 살기 위한 것이 아니고.....더 이상 맛을 느끼지 못 한 것이나, 새로운 죶 대가리를 발견 햇기 때문이다..............끝)
Here are some other observations demonstrating that talk of managed imperial decline and acceptance of multipolarity are nothing more than rebranding of empire.
American Ideas of Multipolarity
Much was made about Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Jan. 30 interview with Megyn Kelly in which he discussed multipolarity. But let’s look more closely at what he really said:
And I think that was lost at the end of the Cold War, because we were the only power in the world, and so we assumed this responsibility of sort of becoming the global government in many cases, trying to solve every problem. And there are terrible things happening in the world. There are. And then there are things that are terrible that impact our national interest directly, and we need to prioritize those again. So it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power. That was not – that was an anomaly. It was a product of the end of the Cold War, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet. We face that now with China and to some extent Russia, and then you have rogue states like Iran and North Korea you have to deal with.
This is not the same multipolarity as envisioned by China, Russia, and others,(다시 한번...괴벨스는 언어의 외곡을 대중조작의 첫 걸음으로 보앗습니다.....트럼프과 그 졸개들이 멀티폴라...를 이야기 한다 하여...그것이 우리들이 말 해 온 멀티폴라와는 전혀 다른 의미 입니다......단어를 보지 말고, 그 단어가 어떤 의미로 쓰엿는가를 항상 점검하지 않으면...졸지에 짱구 됩니다..
지금 세상이 그래요...............나는 자유 민주주의 체제를 지키기 위해 계엄을 햇다....는 윤성열의 자유 민주주의체제가 우리가 생각하는 그런 것과는 정 반대입니다....중요한 것은 단어의 동일성이 아니고...그 의미와 내용입니다...
노무현이 나발 거렷던 사람사는 세상이 사람만 잡는 세상이엇던것과 꼭 같습니다..) which is largely based on win-win deals. As many have pointed out, the US seeks win-lose transactions, and this is nothing new under Trump. As Glenn Diesen states:
In a multipolar world, security is enhanced by reducing the security competition between the great powers, while a mutually beneficial peace can exist under a balance of power and acceptance of the status quo. Even small- and medium-sized states can obtain more political autonomy from the great powers by cooperating with all great powers to diversify their economic connectivity. However, the US appears to be attempting to defeat China as its main rival, and coerce small and medium states into spheres of influence to ensure political and economic obedience.
Back to Rubio. He’s long been a warmongering neocon, and if we look at a wider sample size than just the widely circulated quote from the Kelly interview, it’s clear that’s still what the administration is selling.
As Un-Diplomatic points out this idea that Rubio is representative of a wider acceptance of multipolarity in the Trump administration comes despite the fact that his confirmation testimony before the Senate:
And if we look at what he said just a few minutes later in the very same Megyn Kelly interview, it sounds a lot more like business as usual:
If you look around the world, I would say that in many cases our adversaries are stronger than they’ve ever been and became stronger over the last four years…
I think if you look at the Middle East, we had the outbreak of a war that can – that’s been incredibly costly and divisive. It started on October 7th when these savages came across and committed these atrocities.
We have a war in Europe as well in Ukraine, as I mentioned a moment ago. So we had to – and I think really one of the linchpins that sort of triggered all of that was that chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. I think that sent a very clear signal to someone like Vladimir Putin that America was actually in decline or distracted – we can move – and he did.
I think you see it in the Indo-Pacific where every day – it’s not just Taiwan; it’s the Philippines – are being aggressively challenged by the Chinese militarily, or coercion is spreading throughout the world, the Chinese are using coercive tactics, not just in their – near abroad, but in other parts of the world as well.
And the following is key:
I think we have a lot of work to do. And I’m going to tell you – and this is something that’s not often appreciated enough – countries will openly complain about the U.S. being very firm and being engaged in these things in a very firm way; but privately, in many cases, they welcome it. They welcome U.S. engagement. They want to know – they want clarity in our foreign policy, and then they want us to take action to be reliable.
Rubio, as the foreign representative of the United Plutocrats, is signalling with his fabricated history and announcement of intentions that they’re still living in a fantasy land and are not going to go peacefully into reality. What he’s talking about is American hegemony — just with different strategies on how to get there.
So what are those strategies?
Let’s Have Ourselves an AI Cold War
Before Vice President JD Vance’s dress down of the European political elite over certain speech restrictions at the Munich Security Conference, he was in Paris for the international AI summit. It received far less attention, but there he delivered menacing remarks on the US dominating the future of AI. Here are a few highlights:
The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety. It will be won by building — from reliable power plants to the manufacturing facilities that can produce the chips of the future.
…And yesterday, as I was touring Les Invalides with General Gravett with my three kids, he was kind enough to show me the sword that belonged to America’s dearest international friend from our own revolution — of course, the Marquis de Lafayette.(라파예트 후작)
He let me hold the sword, but, of course, he made me put on the white gloves beforehand, and it got me thinking of this country, France, and of course of my own country and of the beautiful civilization that we have built together with weapons like that saber — weapons that are dangerous in the wrong hands but are incredible tools for liberty and prosperity in the right hands.
I couldn’t help but think of the conference today. If we choose the wrong approach on other things that could be conceived of as dangerous — things like AI — and choose to hold ourselves back, it will alter not only our GO- — GDP or the stock market but the very future of the project that Lafayette and the American founders set off to create.
The US and the UK of course refused to sign a weak, non-binding declaration pledging to develop AI responsibly. Vance instead called for a civilizational AI struggle against China — and anyone that would use Chinese technology.
The Trump administration is continuing Biden’s Cold War anti-China policy and, also like Biden, is demanding more and more tribute payments from its “allies.”
The US continues to cannibalize the EU, and the case of Taiwan is illustrative. Biden started the pressure on Taiwanese chip making giant TSMC to move some chip production out of Taiwan (just in case!). Team Trump just strong-armed the company into expanding the company’s investments in the U.S., with an additional $100 billion planned on top of the previously announced $65 billion.
That might have been the “least bad” outcome for TSMC, which was facing calls to take a stake in floundering Intel.
Still, by forcing TSMC to invest stateside, the US might also be destroying the company which will harm its customers and suppliers, most of which are US firms. The US simply isn’t a financially feasible manufacturing location. There’s a lack of workforce, but the biggest problem remains its hyper neoliberalism. As Micahel Hudson writes:
[The US] has built too high a rentier overhead into its economy for its labor to be able to compete internationally, given the U.S. wage-earner’s budgetary demands to pay high and rising housing and education costs, debt service and health insurance, and for privatized infrastructure services.
미국에선 연봉 일억을 받는 홈리스가 ...전혀 이상한 경우가 아닙니다.
Yet Vance was in Paris demanding countries fall in line behind the US AI empire or risk becoming adversaries.What does all this mean on the home front? AI advancement is now priority one and the American plutocrats are tying most of their hopes for US supremacy to it.
While Vance spoke in Paris about AI “empowering” workers and both Biden and now Trump champion the jobs TSMC investment in the US will create, make no mistake about it: jobs and the well being of American proles are not the aim here. It is empire and maintaining obscene amounts of wealth for American plutocrats, which dream of AI rendering human labor obsolete. Vance’s remarks in Paris are tied directly back to Musk and the DOGE boys taking a wrecking ball to the federal government to aid its looting and create a giant AI dystopia:
It’s as if Vance and the administration are taking policy directly from the recent book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander Karp and Nicholas Zamiska, the CEO and general counsel of Palantir. That wouldn’t be surprising since Vance is largely a project of Palantir founder, Paypal mafia billionaire, and young blood connoisseur Peter Thiel. Here’s Unpopular Front on The Technological Republic:
The book is extremely creepy: It becomes clear in the course of reading this “Technological Republic” the authors propose is essentially some kind of merger or acquisition of the United States government by Silicon Valley, a state run by an engineering elite that would be empowered to “ruthlessly” pursue “outcomes.” It’s a proposal for a kind of tech oligarchy: “no public “oversight for me, surveillance for thee.”
…To recap, Karp wrote his dissertation on a form of rhetoric that employs aggression to bind a community together and then he goes and writes a terrible, jargon-filled, cliché-riddled book about how the United States needs to rearm with the help of Silicon Valley. The shittiness, one might say, is the point: is Karp intentionally using jargon in this technical sense to create his own vision of Volksgemeinschaft?(게마인샤프트) Maybe, but the rhetoric is not stirring! As for “aggression in the life-world,” Karp is saying “Yes, please!” In the book, Karp explicitly says how he wants to cultivate a more martial society to defend “the West.”
Shift from Woke Empire to a More Traditional Form of Empire Building
One of the key “stakeholders” in the Trump-DOGE movement are the Conservative think tankers and Christian right(서구 문명을 개독교 없이 설명하기는 불 가능합니다...모슨 악의 근원은 걔독교 입니다...개독교가 없는 악은 악이 아닙니다..), represented by Russell Vought at the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The founder of a right-wing Christian think tank, he wrote the chapter on executive power for Project 2025.
This strain of Christian conservatism has for decades viewed the government as dominated by Marxists. While that’s not true, one can understand the complaints about liberal grifting: “The state is crawling with nonproductive special interests: liberal elites, minority rights advocates, undocumented immigrants and their allies, all animated by the desire to sustain themselves without effort of their own.”(니는 개독교 광기의 원본입니다...일 하지 않는자 처 먹지도 말라...는 마치 계몽주의 처럼 사람들을 일의 노예로 종속 시켯습니다.....심지어 막스주의 에서도 일- 노동- 에 대한 기본적인 인식을 다르지 않습니다..
일을 신앙처럼, 철학처럼 강제하지만, 강제한 만큼의 보상을 주지 않앗던 것이지요.
이들은 이런 부족한 보상에 대한 불만을 노동의 거부, 독생자 예수의 구원 신앙에 대한 거부로 비난하엿고
반공의 광기는 더 할나위 없는 노동착취를 만들어 냇습니다.
지금은,
일을 하고 싶어도 일을 할 수 잇는 일자리도 없을 뿐더러..
일을 해도 포도시 처 먹고 사는 정도의 보상만 지급되는 일자리 뿐입니다.
그러면서도 여전히 ...노력 하지 않는자 처 먹지로 말라는 신앙적 으름짱은 계속 됩니다.
We see Musk making similar comments about USAID.
And Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, for example, likes to do the same. Here he is speaking at last year’s National Conservatism Conference (a Thiel-funded project):
The new left we now face is not simply nationalistic in character. It is totalitarian in its mission. It is expansionist, imperialistic, and practically jihadist in its theocratic stance. Given its international scope, limitless financial resources, and unprecedented technological sophistication, the global uber-nation the left is now building already threatens Americans more comprehensively and intimately than the USSR [ever did]…
While the US has for decades, under GOP or Democrat rule [1], been transferring wealth upwards, the claim that liberals are Marxists refuses to die.(공화당이 집권햇던 민주당이 집권햇던,,,아무 구분없이 막대한 부가 상위 1%로 현기증이 나게 이동 햇음에도 불구하고 리버럴이 막스주의자 라는 주장은 여전히 약발을 받고 잇다....여기서 리버럴 이란 민주당 지지자들을 의미 합니다.
즉....민주당 집권 시기에도 공화당과 꼭 같이 막대한 부의 이동이 상위 1%로 이루어졋음에도 불구하고
여전히...그들 수구 꼴통 미친개들은 민주당을 막스주의자라고 비난 하고 잇다는 .......소리입니다..
미국을 보면 한국을 알 수 잇다고 햇지요??
한국의 민주당이나 ...그들을 향해 씨불거려 되고 잇는 수구 똘통 놈들의 모습은....미국의 공화당 민주당의 모습과
완벽하게 같습니다.
진보의 아이콘 처럼 인식되고 잇는 노무현의 정체를 가장 극명하게 보여주는 사진..
노무현 정권시절..
가장 많은 빈부격차가 벌어졋고
가장 많은 부동산 투기질이 일어낫고
가장 많은 비 정규직 노동자들이 많들어 졋습니다............
노무현이 진보 좌파 입니까???
그런 노무현을 좋아 하던 싫어 하던 ...그건 본인의 취향의 문제이니 다른소리가 알 바 아니지만
입은 삐뚜라졋써도 말을 바로 하라고 햇지요??
노무현이 진보 좌파라면
삶은 돼야지 돼가리가 벌떡 일어나 웃다 되질 일입니다.
One explanation between the ongoing confusion is that there other benefits to equating the two, such as enlisting the Christian right as foot soldiers for the ambitions of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. That’s because the answer for Vought, Roberts, and others who adhere to this line of thinking is to demolish the government. It is the enemy. While one can understand the sentiment among a beaten down working class that rarely ever sees government work for them, supporting its demolishment pays no mind to who will pick up the pieces, namely Silicon Valley and Wall Street billionaires who, like the liberal grifters, also desire to sustain themselves without effort of their own.
This fusing of liberal identity grift with the economic left is also being used as bludgeon against the latter:
And in the case of the American empire, the door has been slammed shut on the Woke Imperium. Lest we forget that brief period of imperial American branding:
Such selective use of ‘woke’ causes allows for an open-ended potential for intervention in a long list of trouble spots in the Global South while also shoring up a domestic narrative that intervention would be beneficial—and outright righteous— given the purity of the Blob’s convictions.
We used to get stuff like this to sell US proxies:
Now there’s this:
More widely, the Trump administration and its backers like Thiel are keen to use Christian nationalism in the same way wokeness was used: to amass power and wealth. Among all the tech goons crawling around Washington these days, Thiel is one of the spookiest and most geo-politically strategic. One could argue he is now the leader of the tech-based section of the military-industrial complex, and he has for years tutored Vance. Does the latter share Thiel’s vision for “post-democratic” rule? As Thiel has said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Silicon Valley tech billionaires instead must guide American society — whether it’s willing to follow or not. And as Thiel’s business partner, Karp, wrote in Technological Republic, they must cultivate a more martial society to defend “the West.”
That of course includes more power and money to Silicon Valley so it can maybe produce weapons to defeat enemies like China and definitely get rich doing trying.
It also means fostering Christian Zionism and support for“post-democracy,”(민주주의 이후의 시대) which are are rampant in the Trump administration.
-“post-democracy,”...앞으로 이 단어를 무지 무지 하게 보도 듣고 씨불거리게 될 것입니다.
It’s even visible in the Secretary of Defense’s ink:
십자가 그리고 쌩 지뤌 떨어 되고 Hegseth나....왕 자 쓰고 쌩 지뤌 떨다 탄핵에 몰린 윤성열과
무슨 차이가 잇써 보입니까??
진짜 문제는 이런자들의 존재가 아니고..
민주주의치하에서는 이런자들이 얼마든지 대통령도 되고 국방장관도 될 수 잇다는 것입니다..
민주주의가 위기를 훨씬 넘어...민주주의는 이미 내용년수들 다해 진직히 사라져 버렷써야 할 체제가 아직도 골망 골망 살아
숨쉬고 잇기 때문에.....저런일이 일어나고 잇다는 것입니다..
민주주의는 이미....진직히 관짝속에 들어가 잇써야 할 송장체제라는 것이지요..
-“post-democracy,”.......... 우리는 이미 민주주의 이후의 시대를 살고 잇습니다..
우리가 지금의 시대가 참 곤욕스러운 것은
민주주의가 찌그러저 가고 잇다는 것은 분명한데....대안 체제가 아직도 들어나지 않고 잇기 때문입니다..
낡은 것은 죽어 가는데도 새로운 것은 아직 탄생하지 않았다는 사실 속에 위기가 존재한다. 바로 이 공백 기간이야말로 다양한 병적 징후들이 출현하는 때다.......................그람시
사회의 지성이라면,,,이미 되져 버린 민주주의 걱정 한답시고 ...죽은 자식 부랄 만지는 암짝에도 필요 없는 짓만 처 하지 말고
포스트 민주주의 시대가 어떤 모습이어야 하는가??...라는 모델을 제시 할 수 잇써야 합니다.
그런쪽에 고민 하지 않는다면...사회 지성으로써는 업무 태만입니다.
Sure enough, Hegseth is making it easier to commit war crimes, as if the US needed any more encouragement on that front. From Daniel Larison:
Hegseth has derided international law and the domestic laws governing war for many years, and he has been a vocal cheerleader for accused and convicted war criminals. His advocacy for war criminals was one of the main reasons why he was unfit to be Secretary of Defense, and he is already proving his critics right. It is unsurprising but still alarming that he would remove officers that might get in the way of future lawbreaking. Presumably he will now fill these roles with replacements that share his ideological hostility to the rule of law.
The Secretary of Defense admitted that the reason for removing the JAGs was so that they wouldn’t be “roadblocks to anything that happens.”
Roadblocks that attempted to prevent American corporations from essentially buying off foreign governments are also being removed . While there was a lot of celebration about the blows dealt to USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy by the Trump Administration, it should be clear by now that’s not exactly what happened. The corruption is just becoming more efficient. [2]
Trump also recently rolled back the minor constraints on American commanders to authorize airstrikes and special operation raids outside conventional battlefields, which basically means the US can label anyone anywhere a “terrorist” and target them for death.
Hegseth reportedly wants a larger, more aggressive force less hindered by the laws of armed conflict.
One obvious benefit of a marketing rethink from Davos liberalism to an AI plutocracy dressed up as Christian nationalism is that it’s challenging to sell and inspire many people to fight for the former. In the US, the bourgeoisie might fly a Ukrainian flag above their “in this house we believe” yard signs, but they’re not prepared to fight. Nationalism, religion, and defense of a common heritage are more useful tools in what’s being pitched as a civilizational battle. Nazi salutes by prominent Trump backers like Musk and Steve Bannon surely appeal to some as well.
It’s worth noting that US military recruitment is on the rise.
There is evidence, however, that the uptick began last year as the Army overhauled much of its nearly $2 billion recruiting enterprise, but they climbed higher in December and January.
Maybe the Nazi salutes by prominent Trump backers like Musk and Steve Bannon will help appeal to some as well.
It’s not just in Ukraine that Western elite have been cultivating Nazis for a long time but also across all the former USSR states as well as the West itself. What’s the point unless you’re going to cash those chips in at some point?
Despite Vance’s calling out of DEI-”woke”-green Europe and the bloc’s anti-democratic thuggery towards voters supporting insurgent parties in Germany and Romania, let’s not forget what Vance didn’t mention:
He did not include any references to draconian crackdowns on opposition to genocide in Palestine, nor did he complain about the tours of Europe by neo-Nazi Ukrainian groups. Indeed, as he lectures the EU on speech, the US continues to tighten the muzzle on any opposition to US-backed Zionist war crimes. It’s much more likely that Vance and the new brand of American empire simply want the EU to move along with its own shift to civilizational struggle. It might not be far off what with drastic increases in military expenditures on the way, causing more widespread economic pain and social discontent leading to further gains for the “far right.” And a neo-Nazi regime fighting a war against Russia on the bloc’s Eastern border. What could go wrong?
It might be a stretch to assume that all the bickering between the US and EU nations over Ukraine is kayfabe, but it should be pointed out that this was the plan all along. Go back and read through any number of think tank pieces over the past five years. This was it. Let the Europeans shoulder more of the burden against Russia while the US focuses on China. Is it doomed to fail? Almost certainly — on both fronts.
The US now might be trying to win Russia over to its side and create some divisions between Russia and China — yet another sign of pervasive thinking in DC that underestimates others and overestimates their own cleverness. Meanwhile, is there any sign that Trump and Rubio’s handlers aren’t going to accept sharing the pie with others until maybe after many more years of repeated humiliations? In other words, more Ukraines.
If you step back, that’s what the rest of Europe is starting to resemble: Project Ukraine in its early years. Is the EU finally going to move forward with plans to remilitarize? It’s hardly even possible, but a destabilized mess of fascist anti-Russian fanatics? Well, that’ll suit the new American Imperium just fine.