Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n
On March 22nd, I headlined\u00a0\u201cWhy the Western Alliance Is Ending,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and I listed the recent events which indicate that the Western Alliance doesn\u2019t have much longer to go. And, now, it has actually already ended. The handwriting is on the wall, for everyone to see; it\u2019s so out-in-the-open, as of today.<\/span><\/p>\n Here is what has just happened (as reported in\u00a0German Economic News<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and translated by me), which virtually brings down the curtains on America\u2019s dominance of the world \u2013 a dominance that started when World War II ended in 1945:<\/span><\/p>\n March 21:\u00a0\u201cGEOPOLITICS:\u00a0Washington nervous: China, Japan\u00a0and South Korea forge an Alliance.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0This news story reports: “For the first time in three years, the foreign ministers of the three countries met. They agreed on\u00a0Saturday in Seoul to work towards a summit of their leaders, and to take on problems with the\u00a0interpretation of history [which have separated them till now].\u00a0They also expressed their intention to continue to work for a free trade agreement and for new multi-party talks on North Korea’s controversial nuclear program.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s the important context of that: The U.S. in WW II conquered Japan, which had invaded China and conquered Korea; but, now, Japan, China and South Korea are moving toward one-another, while China, and indirectly<\/i> the BRICS group of rising economic powers as a whole \u2013 Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa \u2013 are making their move past the previous U.S.-European control of the world. Furthermore, these Asian powers are collectively inviting North Korea to move toward them, and to join this group, which would finally bring an end to the stalemated hostilities between South and North Korea. So: welcome to the 21st Century! (For more details on that, see the terrific news reporting in\u00a0GEN<\/i><\/span><\/a>.) <\/span><\/p>\n And, in addition: for these three economic powerhouses to \u201cwork for a free trade agreement\u201d that\u2019s outside the orbit of Obama\u2019s secret negotiations for his\u00a0TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership<\/span><\/a>\u00a0with them, may mean that they all will be less likely to accept the trade-deal that he is trying to negotiate collectively with them. So: this three-party ministerial meeting is, in itself<\/i>, potentially an extremely important historical event. But it is part of this larger and interconnected whole, which is far more important than any trade-deal.<\/span><\/p>\n March 20:\u00a0\u201cGeneral Motors ends Opel production in Russia.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0This news story reports yet another sign of the separation between the Western and the Eastern economic blocs, which, yet again, is both a direct and an indirect result of Obama’s sanctions against Russia, and of his Secretary of State John Kerry\u2019s agreement with the king of Saudi Arabia to increase oil production in order to drive down the oil price and thereby starve Russia of its crucial foreign-exchange earnings from Russia\u2019s huge oil-sales. However, countering Obama\u2019s purpose of harming Russia<\/span><\/a>, GM\u2019s Russian production facilities might now be acquired as abandoned assets by Russia\u2019s oligarchs or the Russian state, and produce new models, the profits from which will remain inside Russia and accrue to Russians. In this regard: Reuters headlined on March 19th\u00a0\u201cLada maker’s hopes rise as rival flees Russian car market,”<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and reported that, “Russian carmaker Avtovaz, producer of the …\u00a0Lada, expects to grab a bigger share of the shrinking domestic\u00a0market\u00a0as its international rivals pull back.\u201d That money will stay in Russia, building up Russia\u2019s economy, instead of Germany\u2019s (Opel) and America\u2019s (GM).<\/span><\/p>\n March 23:\u00a0\u201cVolkswagen Drives Back Russian Production.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Germany\u2019s largest car-maker adds yet further to the opportunities for Russia\u2019s investors, and for investors in other BRICS countries (since they\u2019re not participating in Obama\u2019s anti-Russian sanctions).<\/span><\/p>\n March 23:\u00a0\u201cSpain: Protest party, Podemos, comes third in regional election.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0“The Socialists won the [Andalusian] election, the Conservatives of Premier Mariano Rajoy clearly lost the\u00a0election.\u201d The conservative party, and its leader of Spain, Mariano Rajoy, which have been strongly pro-American and have supported America\u2019s\u00a0fascist anti-Russian coup in Ukraine<\/span><\/a>\u00a0as much as they thought the Spanish public would tolerate (given that Spain\u2019s public are overwhelmingly anti<\/i>-fascist after the dismal fascist Franco decades), were trounced in regional elections. Spain\u2019s new socialist party, Podemos, was silent on foreign policy because of Spain\u2019s domestic problems, but will likely be less supportive of America\u2019s anti-Russian war than the conservatives have been \u2013 which already has not been very supportive (because Rajoy fears a voter-backlash).<\/span><\/p>\n March 23:\u00a0\u201cFrance: Sarkozy-bloc ahead, National Front strong, Hollande beaten.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0The party of the \u2018socialist\u2019 Francois Hollande, who has been as cooperative with Obama\u2019s anti-Russian policies as he can be (given the public’s sentiment against those policies), has been beaten in local elections throughout France, by two politicians who have spoken out strongly against Hollande\u2019s kowtowing to American supremacy and his caving to Obama on Ukraine and Russia (such as by\u00a0defaulting on the Mistral deal<\/span><\/a>): Nicolas Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen. Nominally, these are \u2018right-wing\u2019 politicians, but in this matter they are predominantly against imperialism, they\u2019re progressives here, because the imperialism is being practiced by America against their own country<\/i>, France; and they are more like Charles DeGaul, who was a French patriot who opposed American domination of French affairs.<\/span><\/p>\n Public pressures in Europe are largely behind the breakaway from America of European leaders (the phenomenon which was discussed and documented in my\u00a0\u201cWhy the Western Alliance Is Ending\u201d<\/span><\/a>). However, the signal event isn\u2019t really in Europe; it\u2019s in Asia:\u00a0\u201cGEOPOLITICS:\u00a0Washington nervous: China, Japan\u00a0and South Korea forge an Alliance.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0What that indicates, and which is only being supported and reinforced by these European events, is a re-alignment of world-powers, in which, Russian leader Vladimir Putin\u2019s \u201cEurAsian\u201d concept is being endorsed virtually world-wide, except perhaps among the Arabic oil-sheikdoms such as the Saudi, Qatari and Bahraini aristocracies, all of whom are allied with the U.S. aristocracy and crucial to the dollarization of the oil-price and thus of the trading of weapons for oil and gas.<\/span><\/p>\n Vladimir Putin\u2019s multipolar world is winning; it\u2019s attracting support from non-fascists in all corners of the globe. Barack Obama\u2019s opposite vision \u2013 reflected especially in his often-repeated phrase, in which he refers to the United States as\u00a0\u201cthe one indispensable nation\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(meaning that all other <\/i>nations are<\/i> \u201cdispensable\u201d) \u2013 is the likes of which the world hasn\u2019t even heard, from anyone else, ever since the time of Adolf Hitler\u2019s infamous \u201cDeutschland \u00c3\u00bcber\u00a0alles\u201d in the 1930s and \u201940s; and it really means the very same thing, only for a different country: it\u2019s actually nationalism, instead of<\/i> patriotism; and only a small minority of people, even in today\u2019s nazi<\/span><\/a> Ukraine and in Nazi Germany, have supported it, or sought to impose it. It\u2019s far stronger among aristocrats than among the public.<\/span><\/p>\n The shock of the world, to find a President of the United States saying that, and his going so far as to tell America\u2019s military to view America\u2019s economic competitors as being what they will be fighting against, is driving away the publics, and now even the leaders of other nations. For example, Obama told West Point cadets:<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. \u2026 Russia\u2019s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China\u2019s economic rise and military reach\u00a0worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n He thinks our military should be fighting against nations (such as Russia<\/span><\/a>) that have rising economies<\/span><\/a>. For him,\u00a0it\u2019s about conquest, and not only about national defense. And he\u2019s obsessed with conquering Russia.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Even the\u00a0aristocrats in most other countries\u00a0are now\u00a0backing off from that.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0He has the support for it, at home, of virtually all members of Congress<\/span><\/a>, but even in the U.S.,\u00a0more than two-thirds of the public oppose it.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0He has over-reached, so very far, that it\u2019s finally beyond his grasp, and it\u2019s only driving the world faster into the multipolar vision that Russia\u2019s leader, much\u00a0maligned by the Western press,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0has been championing for the world\u2019s future: a world of free and independent states, which recognize that for any one of them to benefit at the expense of others is wrong and brings no one any good in the final analysis \u2013 much less in the present (just wars such as in Ukraine<\/span><\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n Whatever may happen to Vladimir Putin, his vision has actually taken over the world, and he has made clear that Russia itself (and he himself) has no intention or desire to do so. (He even refuses to accept the rebelling region of the former Ukraine into becoming a part of Russia.<\/span><\/a> He had accepted Crimea only because it\u2019s vital to Russia\u2019s national defense and had been a part of Russia until 1954<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span>) This is remarkable. And his contrast to Obama is also remarkable. <\/span><\/p>\n Obama\u2019s arrogance is what\u2019s driving the world away. It has brought about the end of The American Century, in world affairs. It has given entirely new meaning to the old phrase \u201cthe ugly American.\u201d In its new meaning, this phrase refers not to the American public (who never really deserved such opprobrium anyway), but clearly to the American aristocracy,\u00a0the billionaire elite whom Obama and the U.S. Congress actually serve.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0They are America\u2019s problem, but perhaps they won\u2019t become the world\u2019s, after all. That is what is at stake here: whether an overreaching national aristocracy will succeed in imposing its will upon and against the entire world. Other aristocracies are now deciding: no. They won\u2019t. And that\u2019s today\u2019s big news-story.<\/span><\/p>\n ———-<\/span><\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of\u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0of\u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse On March 22nd, I headlined\u00a0\u201cWhy the Western Alliance Is Ending,\u201d\u00a0and I listed the recent events which indicate that the Western Alliance doesn\u2019t have much longer to go. And, now, it has actually already ended. The handwriting is on the wall, for everyone to see; it\u2019s so out-in-the-open, as of today. Here is what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":276213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,59,77,526,524,92,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-144911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-military","15":"tag-oil","16":"tag-propaganda","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-terrorism","19":"tag-usa-news","20":"tag-warfare","21":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}