Back to Balance and Spheres (Revised)
New readers should know that my Substack posts are dedicated to surveillance of matters related to a central premise, and that premise, put at its simplest, is that the collective West, made ever more desperate and ruthless because of its unsustainable debt load, is attempting to beat back the multiple forces of multipolarity. It is currently doing this on three main fronts: against Russia over the proxy excuse of defending Ukraine; against Iran over the proxy excuse of defending Israel; against China over the proxy excuse of defending Taiwan. But there is no limit to the number of fronts that the West will entertain.
On the Question of Empire
Imperialism, taking many diverse forms, is infinitely putty-like.
The 1980s to early 1990s saw the transition of a global order away from one that had been defined around the Cold War conflict from 1945 between two superpowers. Supposedly this was all about capitalism versus a version of communism or, if you prefer, state capitalism. To some extent, that division was real (if we are speaking in bottom line terms). Only, as it turned out, communism had little to do with the conflict itself, because the conflict persisted unabated after the communism had ended with the end of the Soviet Union.
What the conflict was really about (in addition to being about who could suck up the most wealth from the Global South) was the hegemony of the US and its subalterns in the collective West. This blossomed in the 1990s in the form of “globalization,” the rapid intensificiation of economic links between previously sovereign nations, and their integration in obedience to international institutions that in turn were subject to disproportionate influence exerted by Washington.
If, as in the case of the WTO, those disproportionate ties were insufficiently pliable to Washington priorities, then the institutions were downgraded or ignored. This was the moment of peak “globalization,” which further integrated countries like Russia, China and India into a global financial and trading system that was dominated by Washington. A promise of harmony and equality permeated the air, a sense that for once everyone could benefit.
But there was never any harmony, only rising expropriation and inequality.
The Implosion of the Soviet Union
There were many reasons for this, but principal amongst them, I would contend, were two giant factors.
The first of these was that the Soviet Union and its satellite states imploded in the period 1989-1991. There were many reasons for this, too. But before we get to that set of reasons, I will make the point that this was the last opportunity in modern history for the US to transform the world.
Instead, and predictably, it doubled down on unimaginative, amoral, foreign policies guided only by the motive of maximization of short-term power. As we know, the US failed, utterly failed, contempuously failed and made no serious attempt even to explore any other options for the human experience.
Instead, even as the Soviet Union began to implode, the US was already upping its game (the game it had perfected as far back as 1953 with the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran, and in 1954 with the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala - prelude to a long list of such interventions, in Indonesia, Greece, Chile, Brazil, etc., etc.) with the overthrow and destruction by covert and overt foreign intervention of Panama in 1990 and of Iraq in 1991.
Among the principal explanations for the implosion of the Soviet Union, I would contend, were the damaging aftershocks to the Soviet Union of its occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, the worrying inefficiency of its infrastructure as demonstated by the Chernobyl disaster of 1985, the growing dissatisfaction throughout much of Soviet leadership - especially as represented by Mikhail Gorbachev - with a schelorotic Soviet bureaucracy, and the impressionability of Soviet leadership and elites to the persuasiveness of Western propaganda, through Western informational and entertainment media product, as to how great was the Western world and how great was (relatively) unregulated capitalism. There was also the vulnerability of the Soviet Union to the explosive growth of nationalism beyond the frontiers of the central Slavic state, a nationalism which, I suspect, was prodded into existence, at least in part, through Western propaganda and covert influencing.
From Globalization to Globalism
The second major reason undermining the viability of capitalism in its globalization phase, was the unanticipated speed of the State-driven, take-off of the Communist Chinese economy - already apparent by the time that its membership of the WTO was approved in 2001. This showed that economic deregulation was potentially devastating to the interests of the US ruling class and its scions throughout the Western-dominated world.
The globalization phase of US empire, therefore, gave way to what we can describe as the period of neoconservative globalism, a system of US hegemony enforced by a toolbox of aggressive economic punitive measures against competitors backed up when necessary by covert (principally) and overt (occasionally) military and other coercive agencies. This phase was birthed as the US acquired tactical insight into the logics of imperial maintenance in places like Panama and Iraq, as we have seen, soon to be followed by a more articulated neoconservative agenda under the informal leadership of Robert Kagan and his wife, Victoria Nuland in the form of their playbook, Project for a New American Century and its program for the destabilization, amongst other things, of several Muslim countries and any other countries, like Russia or Iran that might resist the program, for the coercive refashioning of the globe into a US-dominated “rules based” order.
Back to Balance
Comments of US president-elect Donald Trump in recent days to the effect that Canada should become the 51st state of the US, that the US should acquire both Greenland and the Panama Canal (not ruling out the use of military force to do so), and that the US should impose its will on Mexico if Mexico fails to do what Trump considers that it should be doing to control the cartels and illegal emigration from Mexico into the US, have had a disquieting impact around the world, even as Trump doubles down on US support for Israeli genocide of Palestinians and the Zionist beating of the drums for a crushing war against Iran.
A Hint of Serious
Some of these newer ambitions are devoid of apparent sense. There is no Chinese control over the Panama Canal as Trump claims. Panama is in charge of the Panama canal as arranged by the Carter-Torrijos treaty, whose fulfilment under George Bush Senior was allowed only after Bush launched a Christmas invasion to crush the Panamanian army under former CIA asset Manuel Noriega, and installed a pro-US government.
But yes, what there is - through South America and the Global South - is a growing Chinese influence through trade and China’s Belt and Road initiative. Paradoxically, as I noted the other day, China’s growing strength in South America is rendering the Panama Canal moot, since the canal, at the current time, is insufficiently wide or deep to allow passage for the largest of China’s tankers, which is why China has bought and is redeveloping the Peruvian port of Chancay to replace the Canal.
What seemed at first to be a string of arbitrary, perhaps jocular, but needlessly provocative comments of a distinctly Teddy Rooseveltian flavor, is beginning to cohere in the minds of many around the world, including in Russia, as representing the dawn of a new age of American imperialism - and yes, the term imperialism still applies even if it is one of a somewhat revanchist kind (in terms of its tariffs, its walls against immigrants, and its pulling of neighbors into one tight unit).
The new age will replace the neoconservative wet dream of perpetual US hegemony with a somewhat more modest, but realistic - in the realpolitik sense of the word - adjustment to an emerging world order. I have been accustomed to describe this order, optimistically, as multipolar or multicentrist. But I have also worried that it might simply represent a return to the 19th and 20th century world order of great powers and of the alliances and conflicts between them. This is the world of the “balance of powers,” the aim of which is to secure global stability through the establishment of “spheres of influence,” by each of the major powers, over the secondary powers, usually close to them, in which they can have confidence that their will and their interests will be allowed by rival great powers to take precedence.
Unfreezing the Arctic
Such an interntional system can bring about a period of relative stability, but the stability is under constant threat of the breakout of inevitable tensions, arising from greed an fears of being taken advantage of.
This is the world to which Trump is now reverting. But it has a novel focus, and that focus is the Arctic. By uniting, in one form or another, the US with both Canada and Greenland, Trump is emphasizing that the US has a “sphere of influence” in the Arctic that is almost of large as that currently enjoyed by Russia.
The Arctic has become enormously more important in the era of climate change because the melting of the ice greatly increases access to the mineral wealth that lies below the ice, and also has made and will make possible more transit routes for shipping that transform the physical distribution of products in such a dramatic way that some other routes, once considered existentially crucial, such as the Suez and Panama canals, will become much less important and critical.
Indeed, I have often wondered whether the world’s torpid progress towards resolving the challenge of climate change is explained by unwillingness of the oligarchic and corporate class and its political pawns to pass up the unprecedented trade and transit opportunities of climate change. Did they decide to put on hold any serious action to resolve climate change, perhaps by such stalling measures as “sun dimming” (the suspected purpose, Robert Kennedy doubtless thinks, of the ubiquity of chemtrails)?
It could be that the situation in the Arctic is shaping up as an articulation of a new front of conflict in a perpetual struggle between Russia and the US. But it could also be - and this has been rumored, as indicated earlier today by Dima of the Military Summary Channel - that there has been a reaching out by Trump towards Putin in the spirit of seeking a grand security agreement between these great powers.
This agreement could be just about the Arctic, but it could also be extended to Europe, and to the world. In other words, perhaps the Arctic might be the catalyst for the kind of overarching new security architecture that Russia has consistently said that it wants in order to resolve the Ukraine crisis. If Trump needs “something big” with which to impress the US public even as he downsizes or eliminates the role of the US in the Ukraine conflict, then what could be bigger than this?
If Russia can be enticed by the long-term benefits of a peaceful exploitation of the Arctic in balance with, or even with the cooperation of other Arctic powers, principally the US, then it must do so without destroying its alliance with China. It is not unremarkable therefore that Putin should have recently advertised an upcoming telephone meeting that he will have with Xi Jinping, even though such meetings are a regular phenomenon.
Implications of a New Order
Ideology
In short, what may be emerging, therefore, is a rapprochement between Russia and the US in which the Arctic is recognized as an area of mutual interest and the US retires from Ukraine, and perhaps from NATO.
Such a transition by a Trump administration foreign policy - from the neocon position of US-centered globalism to a foreign policy of the balance of power or spheres of influence - may not in itself herald all that great of an improvement in the light of what we can recall of how the world was before the first Cold War.
But it does have the advantage of abandoning an ideologically-driven foreign policy in favor of an inherently more predicable interest-driven foreign policy, one that will allow legitimate space for China, Russia, and the BRICS to pursue their interests under conditions of global security. Whether this will actually benefit many more individual citizens of the world will depend in some measure on whether the ideologues behind the BRICS can think beyond trading currencies and the like to pondering the quality of life, life’s meaning, the perpetuation of the human species, democracy and social justice.
Europe
What happens to Europe will depend on whether Trump is inclined to remove the US not only out of Ukraine, but also out of NATO and even of Europe as a whole. It is unlikely that he will want to detach the US from Europe immediately or in the medium term. He will probably want to continue using Europe as leverage against Russia, unless he finds eventually that Europe, weakened industrially, financially and culturally by its foolish and profoundly unprofitable commitment to Project Ukraine, has become a liability for the US.
Europe, in the meantime, is not likely to survive as a coherent force, whether or not NATO or even the European Union survive. It is not implausible that European unity has required, depended on, US intervention. Without US support, European unity will fragment, and some members may begin to strike their own deals with Russia. In this context we could also expect to see a broad reconsideration of the energy factor and a more freewheeling approach than currently possible so far as European purchase of oil and gas from Russia is concerned. Although, we should note that European consumption of Russian LNG gas is doing extremely well despite all the sanctions and other obstacles, at a time when gas prices generally are drifting upwards.
For the moment, I do not see it likely, as floated recently by Col. Douglas Macgregor, that Germany will leave NATO. This idea is premissed on the assumpton that Germany’s new government, to be formed on the basis of the outcome of elections next month, will be dominated by the thinking of the new AfD party. But I give greater credence to the assessment of Gilbert Doctorow that the elections will result in yet another coalition of establishment parties that will cut out AfD.
This might keep Germany in NATO for the forseeable future, but the reduction of US participation in and financial support of NATO will require a much heavier investment by NATO’s European members in the proportion of their GDPs that they commit to NATO expenses. I do not think, given the current economically strapped climate in which Europe finds itself, that these investments will be made. Nor is it likely that interest payable on seized Russian assets or even a distribution of the capital of such assets, were it ever to be legally imaginable, will provide sufficient compensation. In short, if NATO doesn’t sink completely, it will be weaker and less consequential. Russia will, by and by, exert increasing influence on all of Europe.
Ukraine
How any of this impacts the precise manner in which the proxy war over Ukraine will end remains unclear. Current Russian advances are formidable and they will become more so. I dont buy Trenin’s idea of a tripartite Ukraine because I don’t see that a new Ukraine, dividing Russian Ukraine from a rump proto-fascist Ukraine, makes any kind of sense or is better or safer for Russia. Trump’s ability, were he so minded, to guarantee that Ukraine can never join Ukraine is a step beyond any that the US Senate could stomach. But Ukraine itself, under a new leadership (likely the result of devastating loss on the battlefield) might be persuaded to amend its constitution and itself make a commitment never to join Ukraine.
I would propose, however, that the better approach is to side-step all these issues by going the “big route” outlined above, in the form of a European or even new global security architecture, one that involves the dismantling both of NATO and the removal of nuclear capable missiles on Russian or on anyone’s borders.
Greenland
The Economist today in a mood of imperialist gloat, drools over the “deal of the century” and how the purchase of Greenland could be worth infinitely more to the US, predictably than its GDP of $3bn, 56,000 people and a fishing industry”
“Yet Mr Trump covets Greenland for its strategic and economic potential, rather than its puny output. The island sits between America and Russia in a part of the world that is becoming more navigable as Arctic ice melts. Although America’s Pituffik Space Base on the territory’s north-west coast already provides the armed forces with missile-warning sensors, an American Greenland might better monitor the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap, a strip of the Atlantic Ocean that is the access route for Russian submarines to America’s east coast, and to the North Atlantic.
“On top of this, Greenland’s resource wealth is immense. It has known reserves of 43 of the 50 minerals deemed “critical” by America’s government, including probably the largest deposits of rare earths outside China. These are crucial to military kit and green-energy equipment. Wells off Greenland’s coast could yield 52bn barrels of oil, about 3% of the world’s proven reserves, according to an estimate in 2008 by the US Geological Survey.
“…But as the climate warms, the minerals become both more accessible and more valuable. Already, perhaps the greatest resource rush ever seen, on a per-person basis, is under way. Firms are drilling at around 170 sites, up from 12 a decade ago”.
Middle East Notes
Alastair Crooke, in interview earlier this week with Judge Napolitano, cited former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, James Jeffrey, as confirming that the US never wanted HTS in Syria to disintegrate and did nothing to disturb its control in Idlib. HTS leader al-Jolani has in the past said that he had been instructed by Al Qaeda not to target the West. By 2010, the CIA was spending $1 billion a year training and arming a wide network of anti-Assad militia. In short, this is confirmation of the view that HTS, along with many other fraternal militia were nothing less and little more than contract armies paid by Washington and its allies for the purposes of regime change.
Dick Cheney, the “real” president behind Bush junior, was once told by Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar that the Saudi king knew of nothing that would weaken Iran more than losing Syria. Now HTS, directed by Turkish intelligence and funded by Qatar, has taken Syria. HTS’ al-Jolani, while claiming the other day that Syria needed a cordial relationship with Iran, is falsely blaming Iran for protests, in Aleppo, against HTS destruction of the key Allawite shrine and the massacre of its guards.
Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati, who was the top Iranian commander in Syria under Assad has said publicly that the fall of Syria is a major set back to Iran, and has blamed Russia for failing to provide sufficient support to Assad at the time of the invasion by HTS, even deliberately dropping bombs on empty fields rather than on the advancing army.
Be that as it may, Iran is still very much the focus of US and Israeli attention. From their perspective the main issue seems to be whether to limit an assault on what are misleadingly described as Iranian nuclear facilities or whether there should be a total war. The latter is premissed in part on the idea - I believe false - that Iran could within a few days move from 60% purified uranium to an actual, operable, nuclear-tipped missile and that just one or two of these would be sufficient to impress an Israel that has over four hundred of these.
It is reported that in a meeting in December last year, the G7 concluded that Iran would be a priority, if not THE priority issue for 2025, and if the Iranian issue is not resolved within the next six months there will be a major crisis (i.e. would have the bomb). This thinking indicates that the G7 is trapped by its own propaganda into thinking the bomb is a real issue, and it isn’t. The real issue is regional dominance. I’m
It is difficult to explain how Israel could be anything other than over-extended in the current circumstances. It is still so entrapped in Gaza that a Knesset group is actually demanding, in effect, the annihilation of Palestinians. This is another way of admitting that Israel has not, after all, defeated Hamas and that it is still losing military personnel in Gaza, at the very same time as it has moved into both southern Lebanon and southern Syria. Here, it will surely and eventually be a direct target for both Hezbollah in Lebanon and of Druze, Alawite and Christian and other minority militia in Syria.
Most important of all, Israel will have to deal with Turkey because Turkey will be unable to tolerate the presence in Syria of an Israeli force that collaborates with the Kurds (while the US builds a new military base in the north in collaboration with the terrorist denominated Kurdish YPG), and an Israeli force that is increasingly a direct threat to the foreign, jihadist, Turkish-backed, HTS regime in Damascus, with Israeli positions now only a few kilometers distant. The HTS regime really does need the Syrian oil in the Rmekain and Al-Omar fields, and the Syrian wheat, that is currently being stolen by the Kurds in alliance with the US and Israel.
Turkey now has control over 6 dams and 40% of the water supplies to the northeast. It could even become an ally of Hamas (both are Sunni). Maybe all parties to the Syrian imbroglio are currently pondering what other oil reserves lie close to the surface in Syria.
Yes, perhaps an alliance, a “spheres of influence” agreement between Turkey and Israel is forseeable, but this is not yet on the cards. In the meantime, how could this be a good time for Israel to attack Iran? Israel might want to attend more closely to what Esbati (above) is saying about Iran’s need to rebuild its militia in Syria.