[News] As the US Empire Declines, its War Efforts are Becoming More Desperate

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://orinocotribune.com/as-the-us-empire-declines-its-war-efforts-are-becoming-more-desperate/
As
the US Empire Declines, its War Efforts are Becoming More Desperate
------------------------------

By Rainer Shea  – April 3, 2020

A generation ago, Umberto Eco wrote an essay
<https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism> titled
“Ur-Fascism,” where he applied the emotional characteristics of fascist
movements to predict what fascism would look like when it next rose in the
United States. Eco concluded that among aspects of fascism like a desire
for tradition, a culture of militant hierarchy, and a contempt for
nonconformity, there was a uniquely fascist view of war, one that’s
increasingly come to apply to American militarism. Eco wrote that fascists
embrace a paradigm of eternal warfare, one where enemies both external and
internal must and can constantly be beaten back. And as he described, this
mentality of unshakable confidence in one’s own military might is
unpragmatic and ultimately self-defeating:

*By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same
time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose
wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating
the force of the enemy.*

Like all of the other ways Eco accurately envisioned what Trump-era
politics would be like, this quote is becoming an increasingly good
representation of American foreign policy. When Trump assassinates an
Iranian general under the fabricated rationale that he had been planning to
blow up the U.S. embassy, or goes
<https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/full-scale-war-is-avoided-and-trump-goes-right-back-to-warmongering-e4169d69a8c0?source=search_post---------0>
right
back to Iran warmongering after war with Iran is averted, or carries out a
bombing campaign that reintroduces
<https://theintercept.com/2020/03/15/coronavirus-iraq-us-iran/> the
possibility of such a war, he’s risking war with a country that’s
militarily powerful enough to devastate the U.S. army. But he and the
neocons who support such provocations against Iran are all the while acting
confident that it will turn out fine for the U.S., because their default
attitude is to treat enemies as weaker than is actually the case.

The same applies to how the U.S. has been approaching all of its other
adversaries since the beginning of the 2010s. This was when Obama began
<https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42448.pdf> a “pivot to Asia,” where the
U.S. expands its military presence in the southwestern Pacific in order to
counter China’s rise. It was a preparation for the era of escalating cold
war tensions with China that’s since appeared, and it was accompanied by
the start of proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine that have set off rising
nuclear tensions with Russia. The Washington imperialists started a
great-power conflict in reaction to the decline of U.S. influence, which
itself was a consequence of the U.S. empire’s self-detrimental invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq.

When Trump took the job of leading this great-power conflict, he and his
administration exacerbated all the reminiscently fascist aspects of
America’s recent foreign policy approach: an abandonment of diplomacy, a
paranoid and hyperbolic rhetoric about the supposed threat that the
designated enemies pose, a refusal to consider that belligerent behavior
will further harm American power.

Trump fired missiles at Syria, expanded the sanctions against Russia, and
armed anti-Russian forces in Ukraine. He threatened the DPRK with nuclear
annihilation while imposing more crushing sanctions against its people. He
used <https://consortiumnews.com/2019/05/15/pretexts-for-an-attack-on-iran/>
familiar
WMD accusations against Iran to justify ever more inhumane Iran sanctions,
in addition to the other ways he’s antagonized the country. He started a
trade war with China while escalating the proxy war
<https://www.workers.org/2019/08/43250/> against China’s internal
stability, and while continuing
<https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/03/23/the-coming-war-on-china%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Awatch-john-pilgers-powerfully-relevant-documentary/>
the
military buildup in China’s surrounding regions.

Building upon the Obama administration’s absurd claim that Venezuela poses
a “national security threat” to the U.S., the Trump administration has also
concocted a series of narratives that it uses to justify its
destabilization campaigns and military threats against the country. After
the Red-baiting
<https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/02/05/trump_america_will_never_be_a_socialist_country_we_were_born_free_and_we_shall_stay_free.html>
tactics
and the disinformation
<http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-war-on-venezuela-is-built-on-lies> about
Maduro being a “dictator,” the White House has fabricated
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/30/going-after-maduro/> a series of
drug-related crimes and used them to indict Venezuela’s top leadership. Now
they’re accusing Maduro’s government of a “narco-terrorist” plot to flood
the U.S. with cocaine, and they’re sending navy ships to Venezuela as part
of a new plan for overthrowing the Chavistas.

Like the anti-Russia sanctions
<https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/10/how-an-ever-sanctioning-superpower-is-losing-its-status.html>,
the pronouncement <https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14359> from
Washington that Juan Guaido is the true president of Venezuela, or the drone
murder
<https://off-guardian.org/2020/01/06/is-soleimani-murder-beginning-of-the-end-of-us-imperialism/>
of
General Soleimani, these actions are ultimately helping make the U.S. more
isolated and ineffectual. To further its current Venezuela regime change
project, Washington is tightening sanctions and cutting Venezuelans off
from the resources they need amid the Covid-19 crisis. Washington is also
increasing its resource blockade against the people of Iran, and it hasn’t
halted any of its other sanctions. In response to this atrocity, eight
countries have called
<https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2020/03/27/eight-countries-demand-lifting-of-u-s-killer-sanctions/?fbclid=IwAR13GweQ86UsK832FTsvfUnZYaT_eZsX95F909j-bLg1NHcQ97TxuaOv6c4>
upon
the U.N. to make the U.S. halt its economic warfare operations, and
America’s reputation will no doubt be further harmed by its actions during
this pandemic.

Like is the case for the idea of an invasion of Iran, which would require
<https://archive.thinkprogress.org/war-iran-us-troops-draft-trump-bolton-e649c4a98b98/>
bringing
back the draft, invading Venezuela isn’t a very safe option at this point
in America’s imperial decline. It would require
<https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-09-17/a-u-s-military-intervention-in-venezuela-would-be-a-disaster>
a
military commitment on the same level as Iraq, and it would cause far more
damage to America’s global influence and military capabilities. Being mired
in Middle Eastern conflicts that have arisen because of its reactive
late-stage imperialist war campaigns from the last two decades, the U.S.
doesn’t want to further spread its resources by trying to militarily
overthrow another government. This notably wasn’t the case only nine years
ago, when the U.S. invaded and overthrew Gaddafi.

With this phase in the decline of U.S. imperialism, American militarism
more than ever matches Eco’s depiction of fascist militarism. Trump’s
America is obsessed with military might, stamping out socialism, and
crushing its enemies, yet largely as a result of Washington’s own
belligerence the country is rapidly losing its former power. China, Russia,
Iran, the DPRK, Assad, and Chavez are portrayed as weak compared to
America, yet with each year they and their allies gain more of an upper
hand.

This does not mean the U.S. and the other fascist countries are no longer a
threat to the world’s colonized and exploited people. In the coming years,
these countries will use all available tools for fulfilling fascism’s
ultimate goal, which is to protect capitalist interests. They’ll continue
to carry out genocide for the sake of corporate power, enact police terror
against the populace, increase wealth inequality through privatization and
austerity, and carry out coups and invasions at every opportunity. The
extent of their remaining reach was demonstrated with last year’s U.S. coup
in Bolivia, where the new fascist government is ethnically cleansing
<https://orinocotribune.com/bolivia-faces-croatian-style-ethnic-cleansing-south-african-like-apartheid/>
indigenous
people, privatizing
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/bolivia-interim-government-privatizing-economy/263529/>
essential
services, and opening
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/11/elon-musk-is-acting-like-a-neo-conquistador-for-south-americas-lithium/>
the
country’s lithium up to corporate oligarchs like Elon Musk.

Yet when Eco proclaimed that all fascist governments are destined to lose
wars, he didn’t mean that they’re incapable of succeeding in any attempts
at conquest. He meant that their hubris makes them inevitably prone to
getting into some conflicts that they can’t win. Such is the nature of all
empires, which are bound to win many wars but are also bound to lose
others. Even in the first several decades after World War II, when the U.S.
empire was reaching its height, it experienced two great defeats by failing
to keep the DPRK and Vietnam from remaining communist.

In those moments, we saw American militarism take on the desperate nature
that would ultimately come to define it. The communists of Vietnam and the
DPRK had both made the fascists lose. This is why in an address to the
leadership of socialist Korea, the Black Panther Party leader Eldridge
Cleaver said that “the BPP joins hands with the 40 million Korean people in
our common struggle against our common enemy- the fascist, imperialist
United States government and ruling class. Comrade Kim Il Sung is the most
relevant strategist in the struggle against U.S. fascism and imperialism in
the world today and he has put the correct tactical line for the universal
destruction of fascism and imperialism in our time.”

To replace the system of the fascists, we must stand in solidarity with
those resisting imperialism while working towards socialist and
anti-colonial revolution. In this effort, it’s still useful to apply the
resistance strategy that Kim Il Sung put forth, which is Songun. Songun is
a doctrine of “military first,” stating that in order for the revolution to
protect itself from the inevitable violent attacks of the imperialists, an
armed and trained proletariat must exist unconditionally.

This practice of sufficiently arming and training the revolution’s members
should therefore be followed by all who resist capitalism and imperialism,
from those within the Chavista movement’s militia
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/venezuela-adds-civilian-militia-armed-forces-200211200206055.html>
to
the members of the revolutionary organizations in the United States. In
addition to building the movements and institutions for socialist and
anti-colonial revolution, we must equip ourselves for when the fascists
turn their war against us.

Source URL: Medium
<https://medium.com/@rainershea612/as-the-u-s-empire-declines-its-war-efforts-are-becoming-more-desperate-96c360040b1c>
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