07/19/2024
Friends,
For a webinar organized by the Asia Europe People’s Forum I was asked to give a talk about the new lattice-like network of U.S. military alliances.
It couldn’t be written without reference to our current massive political crisis, so it addressed both. Common Dreams published a slightly revised version of that talk today.
For peace, justice, democracy, and the climate,
Joseph
These are increasingly dangerous times. Several years ago, Walden Bello wrote a book about counterrevolution. With Trump and Vance, two classical fascists, recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and the Heritage Foundation Project 2025, we are approaching the climax of an American counterrevolution.
Bello has also recently reminded us of Antonio Gramsci’s insight about the time that we are living through: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Like Ulysses, we have to navigate the rapids between Scylla and Charybdis.
It is not going to be pretty.
Clearly President Joe Biden is no gift to the world.
Recently a senior arms control diplomat who is close to Ron Klain, Biden’s first Chief of Staff, said that only three people can convince the president to step aside: Jill Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Biden’s sister. There are reports that Pelosi will inform Biden that it’s time to go, but there are no guarantees that she will or that if she does he will step aside, or if he does step aside that the Democrats will be able to come up with a candidate who can beat Trump and his dishonest lackey Vance.
Little noticed here in the United States has been the immensely powerful and dangerous lattice-like network of U.S. military alliances assembled by the Biden Administration in the desperate, probably futile, and multi-faceted U.S campaign to contain China. As the NATO Summit Declaration put it, the threat as seen from Washington is “global and interconnected.” With the passing of the post Cold-War’s unilateral era and the relative decline of U.S. power, Washington has become increasingly dependent on alliances, across the Indo-Pacific and in Europe to contain Chinese and Russian ambitions. Hence the increasing integration of NATO with the array of U.S. Indo-Pacific alliances, some of which date from World War II’s transformation of the Pacific Ocean into an American Lake and others of more recent vintage.
More at:
We face an exceptionally dangerous and demanding period as we are moved into what appears to be a new era of Trump/MAGA fascism and desperate U.S. efforts to maintain its global dominance.
