{"id":348992,"date":"2018-02-19T22:28:46","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T21:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=348992"},"modified":"2018-02-19T22:28:46","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T21:28:46","slug":"three-global-super-powers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/three-global-super-powers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Three Global Super-Powers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

There are currently three global super-powers, three nations that lead the world: China, Russia, and U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n

After World War II, until recently, the U.S. clearly dominated the world, not only culturally<\/b>, with more influence over the world\u2019s other cultures than any other single nation possessed, but also economically<\/b>, with product-dominance throughout the world, and also militarily<\/b> tied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and, then, after the Cold War, still possessing such military dominance, so that <\/span>in 2006, America\u2019s billionaires \u2014 as represented by the most-prestigious two agencies that represent their collective interests against the public, the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard University<\/span><\/a> \u2014 were actively promoting, broadly amongst foreign-policy academics, the idea that the U.S. should seek to occupy a position of such extreme military superiority over Russia, so that since 2006 the concept of \u201cNuclear Primacy\u201d is reflected, by America\u2019s power-centers, as being the correct goal for America, going forward, replacing the prior nuclear-strategic paradigm (since the 1950s) of \u201cMutually Assured Destruction,\u201d or \u201cM.A.D.,\u201d in which nuclear weapons were (and, by Russia, still are) seen as purely defensive strategic military assets between the two nuclear superpowers, weapons whose only actual purpose, for either country, is to ward off a WW III \u2014 no usefulness at all in an actual aggressive military context. Thus, M.A.D. became replaced in America by Nuclear Primacy, nuclear weapons that are put in place to serve not only to ward off a nuclear attack, but also, ultimately, to win a nuclear war against the other nuclear super-power, Russia \u2014 nukes as aggressive weapons, by which the U.S. will (it has been expected, ever since 2006) soon be able to demand, and to receive, Russia\u2019s capitulation, surrender, or else Russia will be destroyed by a U.S. nuclear first-strike, while U.S. casualties, from any presumably few Russian weapons that might make it through this ABM-BMD shield, will be kept to an \u201cacceptably low\u201d level, by virtue of that then-functioning ABM-BMD system, combined with increases in U.S. nuclear striking-power<\/span><\/a><\/span>. This nuclear-primacy paradigm aims for America (its billionaires) to take over the entire world, including ultimately the world\u2019s largest land-mass: Russia. <\/span><\/p>\n

But, now, twelve years later, America\u2019s presumed early lead in such \u2018defensive\u2019 strategic weaponry has become, instead, ever more clearly, just a figment of America\u2019s military-industrial complex\u2019s (MIC\u2019s) fervid marketing-campaign for the development and sale of such weapons<\/span><\/a>, ever since U.S. President Ronald Reagan\u2019s promised \u201cStar Wars\u201d program during the 1980s got the effort, toward a winnable nuclear war, started, as an alleged \u2018defensive\u2019 measure \u2014 not yet overtly<\/i> the end of M.A.D. <\/span><\/p>\n

Soon after Reagan, the Soviet Union, and its communism, and its Warsaw Pact counter to America\u2019s NATO military alliance, all simultaneously ended, in 1991, as a consequence of which, the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC), and especially the large U.S. manufacturers of nuclear-weapons systems, the companies that dominate the MIC, were becoming stranded, because the market for their costliest wares was now in limbo. Though elimination of the Cold War wouldn\u2019t have been an existential threat to these manufacturers, an end to the Cold War on the U.S. side would have threatened the market-values of those U.S. companies, which are controlled by U.S. billionaires, who have lots of clout in Congress. Thus, though the Cold War ended in 1991 on the Russian side, it secretly continued on the U.S. side<\/span><\/a> (that is, amongst America\u2019s super-wealthy, the people who control the U.S. Government<\/span><\/a> \u2014 the main market for the MIC); and America’s strategic switch, away from M.A.D. to Nuclear Primacy (so as to unshackle their market from the prior politically imposed demand to maintain a nuclear balance<\/i> between the two sides), has been a significant part of this secret continuation, by America, of the Cold War, while Russia\u2019s Government continued instead to think in terms of the M.A.D. paradigm. (Russia\u2019s weapons-manufacturers are still owned by the Government \u2014 socialized \u2014 so, there\u2019s no need to grow their \u2018market value\u2019.)<\/span><\/p>\n

In a strictly capitalist country, weapons-manufacturing is a major area of investment for billionaires, whose fortunes there rise to the extent that governments are buying their planes and bombs and missiles, especially those of the most sophisticated types, which are strategic weaponry, such as nuclear systems, which are the most profitable ones of all. Growth-at-all-costs has meant (and means) that the MIC is a cancer upon the entire world. (Eisenhower\u2019s Farewell Address, on 17 January 1961<\/span><\/a>, understated the problem.) Either the entire military will be a public entity, or else there will be (because of its privatized weapons-manufacturing) a tendency for the military to destroy everything else in order to continue to grow, like investors expect and demand \u2014 grow like cancer.<\/span><\/p>\n

A major source of America\u2019s decline was U.S. President George W. Bush, who came into office in 2001 when the Cold War could no longer excite the American public as being a threat (since the Soviet Union and its communism and its military alliance were now long gone), and a new demon thus needed to be brought before the American people, as warranting increased \u2018defense\u2019 expenditures. 9\/11 came along just in time to fill this interim lack of a cause de guerre<\/i>, to attack now Al Qaeda and other (as today\u2019s U.S. President famously tags it) \u201cradical Islamic terrorists.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0 <\/span>However, America\u2019s spending on strategic weaponry requires instead focus against the other nuclear super-power as being the \u2018enemy\u2019, and this is what the end of M.A.D. and the start of Nuclear Primacy (which is manna from heaven for the \u2018Defense\u2019 contractors) have been all about: re-defining \u2018the enemy\u2019, from being a country with which peace must be maintained (M.A.D.), to becoming instead a country that should be outright conquered. And, amongst the lies which are necessary in order to sustain this switch (from M.A.D. to Nuclear Primacy), is the lie that ABMs have no aggressive function, but are \u2018purely for defense\u2019. This lie will enable the public to accept the spending of trillions of dollars of federal money on weapons whose sole real use will be conquering Russia \u2014 or, at least, the attempt<\/i> to do so. <\/span><\/p>\n

Nobody makes public the identities of the individuals, in the U.S. and in its allied countries, who comprise the suddenly booming market for luxurious nuclear-proof deep-underground bunkers<\/span><\/a>. But whomever these owners are, three things about them are obvious: they\u2019ve got lots of money; they think that the prospect of a nuclear war is very real \u2014 worth their pre-paying for suitably luxurious long-term temporary accommodations deep underground; and they aren\u2019t themselves one of the high government officials for whom the government\u2019s taxpayers have already built such bunkers. (Or, perhaps, some of them do belong to the last of those three categories, but they\u2019ve got so much extra money that they can easily afford to pay for more luxurious quarters than the taxpayers have already supplied them with.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Quite similar to Donald Trump, but far more overtly faith-based than the hyper-secular former Miss Universe Pageant owner Trump<\/span><\/a>, George W. Bush had a confidence like the Taliban and Al Qaeda do, that \u201cGod is on our side\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and so Bush acted as if he had no reason to test-out America\u2019s ABM weapons before ordering and buying them (at the public taxpayer\u2019s expense, and private billionaires\u2019 profits, of course). Or, perhaps alternatively, Bush didn\u2019t even care whether these weapons would work, but only whether the owners of the companies that would be manufacturing them would be satisfied with their profits, from the decisions that he was making, which so powerfully affected their profits. In any case, Bush\u2019s focus on rushing forward with a U.S. ABM system demonstrated his strong commitment to the replacement of M.A.D., by Nuclear Primacy. The whole idea of Nuclear Primacy rests upon there being an effective U.S. ABM system installed so as to make the enemy\u2019s retaliatory weapons ineffective. Bush pushed the ABM into production even before there was any indication that it would work. He did this even before the very concept of \u201cNuclear Primacy\u201d was publicly introduced by the two chief agents for America\u2019s aristocracy in 2006. What Harvard and the CFR promoted, was already the Government\u2019s policy. While there were criticisms of Bush\u2019s execution of the plan, there was no significant scholarly opposition against the Nuclear Primacy concept itself.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

All subject-areas of expertise (and this refers to scientists, not to scholars) despised the religious faith-based President George W. Bush, much like they despise the secular faith-based President Donald Trump. For example, everyone knows that Trump has great difficulty finding experts who are willing to serve in his Administration. Similarly, in the October 2004 “Poll of Academic Economists”<\/span><\/a> by the Economist<\/i>, 59% of them answered \u201cno\u201d when asked \u201cIf you had a chance to work in a policy job in Washington, would you take it?\u201d And when queried \u201cFor whom would you rather work?\u201d Bush or his then electoral opponent Senator John Kerry, 81% chose Kerry \u2014 notwithstanding that, as a predominantly conservative lot, the economists did like one<\/i> thing about George W. Bush: \u201cOutsourcing of jobs overseas,\u201d which 86% of them rated to be either good or very good. (Of course, Trump claims to oppose that; so, in this regard, he\u2019s even less acceptable to economists than Bush was.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Under Bush, experts were even trying, with no success, to inform this conservative faith-based President about areas in the federal budget where substantial funds were being simply wasted, but his blind faith caused him to ignore such scientific warnings, and enormous federal waste resulted. For example, the science reporter William Broad headlined in The New York Times<\/i> on 24 September 2003, \u201cReport Sees Risks in Push for Missile Defense\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and opened, \u201cThe Bush administration\u2019s push to deploy a $22 billion missile defense system by this time next year could lead to unforeseen cost increases and technical failures that will have to be fixed before it can hope to stop enemy warheads, Congressional investigators said yesterday. The General Accounting Office, in a 40-page report, said the Pentagon was combining 10 crucial technologies into a missile defense system without knowing if they can handle the task [and subsequently the same thing happened in order to produce the scandalously overpriced and insanely multi-functional F-35 jets], often described as trying to hit a bullet with a bullet.\u201d The article quoted a former Pentagon weapons testing chief, who said that to deploy such an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system just a year hence as planned, would be to deploy \u201cno more than a scarecrow, not a real defense\u201d \u2014 in other words, a system that would almost certainly fail in any actual use \u2014 because so many parts of the system wouldn\u2019t have been tested sufficiently to be designed functionally that soon. The prior (Bill Clinton) Administration, more attentive to such concerns, had established a schedule for testing the various parts of this complex system prior to any possible deployment. However, one of G.W. Bush\u2019s first actions coming into office was to deploy an ABM system, even if it might not work<\/i>, and to do the testing afterward. Bush, it seems, possessed the faith that if science were to fail to supply the system\u2019s functionality, then God would certainly do so, for the benefit of \u201cGod\u2019s People.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post<\/i> thus headlined on 26 April 2004, \u201cDubious Threat, Expensive Defense\u201d<\/span><\/a> and closed: \u201cBush would spend twice as much on missile defense as on customs and border protection,\u201d yet gain only \u201ca rudimentary and uncertain defense against an unlikely long-range missile attack.\u201d Diehl opined that, despite the transformed defense needs after 9\/11, \u201cThe president who never admits error will stay the course.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Bush did stay the course: by the time of 14 February 2005, as the New York Times<\/i> reported the next day, \u201cThe nation\u2019s fledgling missile defense system suffered its third straight test failure.\u201d<\/span><\/a> Commented one scientist there, \u201cIt\u2019s as if Henry Ford started up his automobile production line and began selling cars without ever taking one for a test drive.\u201d But not quite: Bush had now taken his third \u2018test drive\u2019 \u2014 and all three failed. <\/span><\/p>\n

On 4 April 2005, the AP reported, \u201cCongress is weighing how much to invest in the fledgling ballistic missile defense system<\/span><\/a>, which has suffered setbacks and whose cost could easily top the $150 billion partial price tag the Bush administration has estimated.\u201d Some congressional proponents of the ABM system were even quoted as saying that it had to be deployed in order to prevent future terrorist attacks, such as had occurred on 9\/11. Of course, that allegation is absurd \u2014 9\/11 couldn\u2019t have been stopped by an anti-missile defense system. But members of Congress aren\u2019s so stupid as not to know this. That allegation was probably just a marketing-ploy sponsored in back-rooms by corporations such as Lockheed Martin, who might reflect their satisfaction with the statement, by donating to the \u2018appropriate\u2019 PACS.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress were financially shortchanging many of the nation\u2019s authentic anti-terrorist needs. This $150 billion+ could have gone a long way toward achieving real<\/i> protection (and\/or toward serving non-defense needs), if it had been scientifically allocated. <\/span><\/p>\n

Were Al Qaeda to have been voting directly in the U.S. Congress, the ABM system would have had an easier time passing unchanged, exactly as Bush wanted. Al Qaeda would have been fervent Republicans \u2014 they were just as religious, and just as faith-obsessed, though in a different \u2018inerrant Scripture\u2019. If Donald Trump has faith in any \u2018inerrant Scripture\u2019, nobody knows what it is. But, he seems to have lots of faith in himself, even if experts in the respective subject-fields don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the present time, the failure of America\u2019s entire ABM-BMD gamble \u2014 which was started under Reagan, begun being operationalized under G.W. Bush, and finally being installed by Barack Obama and now under Trump \u2014 is painfully clear<\/span><\/a>. But success was never its actual goal: restoring the government\u2019s growth in \u2018defense\u2019 spending (even while cutting now the government\u2019s non-\u2018defense\u2019 spending) is its real purpose. Those billionaires and centi-millionaires must be served, or else Congress-members will lose their seats to well-funded competitors in their own Party\u2019s next primary. The system succeeds marvelously at doing what it\u2019s intended to do: to serve the people who buy the Government \u2014 to serve the actual patrons<\/i> of this \u2018democracy\u2019<\/span><\/a>. Instead of being a democracy, it\u2019s a government that\u2019s bought and sold.<\/span><\/p>\n

While America thus spends itself into becoming increasingly a third-world country, China and Russia pursue different objectives. Specifically in the case of Russia, its military spending is one-tenth of America\u2019s, but, because Russia cannot afford to allow billionaires\u2019 demands for private profit to constitute the incentive-system that drives the Russian Government\u2019s military decisons, Russia has gone militarily from strength to strength, while post-WW-II America (spending ten times as much) has gone from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria, and yet America\u2019s \u2018news\u2019media have cheered all of these evil billionaires\u2019 invasions of those countries we wrecked, as if companies such as General Dynamics owned companies such as the Washington Post<\/i>, and thus (with all that propaganda) the American public continue to respect America\u2019s military higher than any other U.S. institution<\/span><\/a> \u2014 despite such a long string of military failures by this country, despite spending ten times what Russia does on its military, and despite America\u2019s military being the most corrupt part of the U.S. federal Government<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, actually, America\u2019s military spending is probably much higher than just ten times Russia\u2019s, because America\u2019s official figures \u2014 what SIPRI and others use, which is just the \u2018Defense\u2019 Department \u2014 excludes much of America\u2019s military expenses, as a consequence of which, America\u2019s official $617.1 billion FY 2019 expenditure for the Department of \u2018Defense\u2019 masks an actual annual military expense of $1,135.7 billion<\/span><\/a>. That\u2019s $1.36 trillion per year, to do things such as destroy Afghanistan, destroy Iraq, destroy Syria, destroy Libya, perpetrate coups such as in Ukraine<\/span><\/a>, assist coups such as in Honduras, etc. But even that\u2019s not the total \u2018defense\u2019 expenditure which taxpayers have bought for the billionaires, because, throughout its existence, the U.S. CIA has been getting unrecorded off-the-books billions from the international narcotics trade, starting in 1948, when it perpetrated a coup in Thailand and installed there a brutal regime that helped establish the CIA\u2019s off-the-books funding-system, as I had mentioned in a prior article<\/span><\/a>, where I discussed U.S. relations with Syria, in broader histrical context,<\/span><\/p>\n

starting in 1949, when the U.S. CIA, under President Harry S. Truman, did <\/i>its second coup d\u2019etat<\/i><\/span><\/a>, overthrowing a democratically elected progressive Government (the first having been <\/i>Thailand 1948, where the CIA had installed an extremely barbaric dictator<\/i><\/span><\/a> replacing <\/i>the democratically elected government<\/i><\/span><\/a> that had been headed by a <\/i>staunch anti-fascist<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and simultaneously set up the CIA\u2019s off-the-books supplementary funding mechanism from the international narcotics-trade \u2014 a CIA practice which has continued till <\/i>perhaps the present<\/i><\/span><\/a>; and, furthermore, the infamous <\/i>Nugan-Hand affair<\/i><\/span><\/a>, which <\/i>involved Thailand<\/i><\/span><\/a>, definitely involved the CIA\u2019s <\/i>Michael Hand and William Colby<\/i><\/span><\/a>; so, clearly, the CIA is funded off-the-books from the narcotics business, and America\u2019s anti-narcotics laws thus are actually keeping narcotics-drug prices and resultant burglaries and CIA profits artificially high, funneling that illicit money into CIA coffers; and any method to defund the CIA down to its core intelligence-gathering function and to eliminate its coup-function, which is the function that took control in Thailand and Syria and then Iran and many more, would need to regulate \u2014 instead of to continue outlawing \u2014 drugs, which might be the main reason why it hasn\u2019t yet been done: <\/i>illegal drugs provide wealth to the CIA and other gang-lords<\/i><\/span><\/a>, including <\/i>some U.S. Government officials<\/i><\/span><\/a>).<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Another significant milestone in the development of the American elite\u2019s plan to conquer Russia has been the overwhelming \u2014 more than 90% of the votes in both the U.S. Senate and House \u2014 support for the imposition in 2012 of economic sanctions against Russia, to punish the Russian Government for the alleged 2009 murder of one alleged anti-corruption whistleblower in a Russian prison, Sergei Magnitsky \u2014 the Magnitsky Act was passed, and was the first set of economic sanctions against Russia. (The evidence that Magnitsky had been a \u2018whistleblower\u2019<\/span><\/a>, and the evidence that he was \u2018tortured\u2019 in prison, and the evidence that he wasn\u2019t instead the American Bill Browder\u2019s tax-accountant who had helped Browder in a complex tax-evasion scheme that had defrauded the Russian Government of $232 million, are all themselves fraudulent<\/span><\/a>, and even are easily verified as being fraudulent, but both the U.S. Government, and the EU, ignored and continue to ignore all of it.) In order to have a \u2018justification\u2019 to attack Russia, an excuse is needed; and, since the ideological one \u2014 communism \u2014 ended in 1991, Russia needs to be at least a \u2018dictatorship\u2019; so, something such as the Magnitsky Act was necessary in order to get the military-industrial complex\u2019a (MIC\u2019s) PR ball rolling toward even-higher annual U.S. \u2019defense\u2019 spending. However, that excuse, being a \u2018dictatorship\u2019 (with elections that are at least as honest as America\u2019s are), isn\u2019t enough. Russia also needs to be officially declared to be an \u2018aggressor\u2019 \u2014 an aggressive<\/i> dictatorship \u2014 such as to have grabbed portions of its adjoining country, Ukraine. So, America\u2019s Obama regime secretly started in 2011 planning, and then in February 2014 it carried out, a coup against and overthrowing the democratically elected and Russia-friendly Government of Ukraine<\/span><\/a>, and installed there a fascist regime<\/span><\/a> to replace the one that had received 75% of the vote in the Crimean region of Ukraine, and 90% of the vote in the Donbass region of Ukraine, so that both regions refused to be ruled by the Obama-installed rabidly anti-Russian Ukrainian regime, and Russia helped both of those two separatist regions on its borders, and even protected and accepted Crimea\u2019s referendum-vote of over 90% to rejoin Russia, of which Crimea had historically been a part until the Soviet dictator in 1954 arbitrarily transferred it to Ukraine. So, now, the U.S. MIC has the excuses it wants, in order to place \u2014 and thus did place \u2014 its weapons and troops onto and near Russia\u2019s borders, just a ten-minute missile flight-time to Moscow. <\/span><\/p>\n

This plan is moving forward, but nobody can yet say whether, or even when, the U.S. regime will invade. However, the U.S. regime and its NATO allies now also have the excuses that Russia has been holding \u2018aggressive\u2019 military exercises near its borders \u2018threatening\u2019 NATO countries on its border that might invade Russia, and Western \u2018news\u2019media have alarmed their publics against Russia\u2019s \u2018aggressive\u2019 moves after its having \u2018stolen\u2019 Crimea and \u2018attacked\u2019 Ukraine in Donbass. And then there is yet more Russian \u2018aggression\u2019 when Syria requested and received Russia\u2019s military assistance against the U.S.-backed jihadists who, since 2012, have poured, by the tens of thousands, from around the world, into Syria, to be led by the U.S.-backed Al Qaeda there, to overthrow the Syrian Government, which is allied with Russia<\/span><\/a>. So, that too (the Syrian war) could produce a war between the U.S. and Russia; it could start over Syrian territory, where the U.S. insists on regime-change, but claims only<\/i> to be \u2018fighting terrorists\u2019 there. Of course, regardless of whether the invader of Syria (the U.S.), or else the defender of Syria (Russia), wins, the loser in Syria, especially if it turns out to be the U.S. invader (i.e., if Syria remains one country instead of breaking apart, and if Assad becomes re-elected as President there), could then use that superpower-defeat in Syria, as constituting an excuse to invade the winning superpower there. This would be WW III, starting in Syria, instead of in Ukraine. The U.S. regime has set up those two scenarios. <\/span><\/p>\n

1984<\/i> has come in the real world, but the declining and former leading superpower, America (\u201cOceania\u201d in George Orwell\u2019s uncannily prophetic description of the future that he prematurely set to occur in 1984<\/span><\/a>), is apparently determined to stay \u2018on top\u2019, even if it\u2019s the last thing that anybody does. Can it really be that if the world of the future won\u2019t be led by America\u2019s billionaires, then it won\u2019t exist at all?<\/i> Do they really demand \u201cMy way, or the highway\u201d \u2014 really<\/i>? Are America\u2019s billionaires (despite any \u2018humanitarian\u2019 pretenses they individually so often hypocritically express, both in the fictionalized and in the real version) so stunningly united in their actual psychopathy (likewise in both versions \u2014 \u201cBig Brother,\u201d and<\/i> today\u2019s reality)? Thus far, it seems that they are. None of them \u2014 not a one of these people who have the financial resources to bring the world\u2019s most pressing issue honestly to the American public \u2014 is speaking out against the others on it, and devoting major funds to exposing the others for their pumping lies against Russia, and to exposing the truths about such things as ABMs and the MIC. And collectively they\u2019ve got the American public fooled into admiring the MIC (\u201cthe Military\u201d) above all other U.S. institutions<\/span><\/a>. But whether America\u2019s billionaires will carry their collective evil to the extreme, isn\u2019t yet clear. They are the actual decision-makers regarding U.S. Government policy<\/span><\/a>, but they are playing their cards \u2014 as usual \u2014 privately and secretly, until their game (whatever it may turn out to be) will already be finished.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Russia and China each proceeds forward on its own priorities, which aren\u2019t necessarily similar to those of the conquest-obsessed American Government<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org There are currently three global super-powers, three nations that lead the world: China, Russia, and U.S. After World War II, until recently, the U.S. clearly dominated the world, not only culturally, with more influence over the world\u2019s other cultures than any other single nation possessed, but also economically, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":348995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,519],"tags":[30,32,96,535,524,754,523,755,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-348992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-newswire","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cia","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-global-news","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-syria","15":"tag-ukraine","16":"tag-usa","17":"tag-white-house","18":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348992","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=348992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}