The [George W. Bush] aide, [Narcissus], … said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html
For the last few years I have been trying unsuccessfully to discern some consistent, organizing theme to American foreign policy in the supposedly post Cold War Era. A few facts that appear to be true relating to the MENA have really bothered me because of their contradictory nature. Recently, one of the members of this Committee posted a serious question for the Committee he had picked up somewhere else on the Internet.
The question is as follows:
Just trying to keep my scorecard straight. Let’s see. The Americans are using a Turkish airbase to bomb ISIS and protect our allies the Kurds.
The Turks are bombing our allies the Kurds while we are using their airbase. The Americans are supplying human shields for terrorist in Syria who are being bombed by the Russians.
On the Iraqi side, American air power is being used to protect and support the new Iranian puppet regime in Iraq installed by the Americans after the gulf war. The Mahdi army that we fought in Sadr City are now advanced element of the Iraqi army we are protecting.
Officers of “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” the Iranians are standing next to Iraqi officers who are standing next to American officers all cooperating to kill ISIS soldiers who have been receiving weapons from Americans through American proxies we consider”moderate rebels”.
Meanwhile, our “enemies” the Iranians are supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen while our “allies” the people who destroyed the trade centers have involved the U.S. in yet another unauthorized war by aggressively attacking the houthis who were helping the U. S. fight Al Queda in Yemen before .
In the meanwhile “moderate rebels” are undoubtedly being furnished weapons capable of bringing down Russian war planes. So while Russia is bombing ISIS, we are encouraging our proxies to shoot down their planes.
Will someone tell me whose side we are on today?
Then, one of the commenters here pointed me to a whole new viewpoint towards American foreign policy by giving me a link to the works of Andrew Horybko. That lead introduced me to a whole group of thinkers and theses I was unaware existed and viewpoints that previously had never entered my mind.
What formerly seemed nonsensical, suddenly seems consistent and intentional‑The established strategy of the foreign policy of the United States is to create chaos to destabilize the world.
I have long been aware of the neocon program, the Project for a New American Century. first publically espoused about 1997 and signed onto by Elliot Abrams, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney and others signed onto the (PNAC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#Statement_of_Principles I have read many of their publications and most just seemed to be Israel-Firster tripe promoting a huge increase in the size of the U.S. Military coupled with some conservative dribble about American Dominance in the Twenty-First Century. I did not discern the project’s Statement of Principals to be a real manifesto directed at seeking total world domination by the cabal of its authors. When I refer to the project as a cabal, I do not mean that these men and women covertly met in the think tank offices and wrote out some conspiratorial tome. Instead, the growth of the Cabal most likely arose informally in the incestuous milieu of the elite policy mavens of Washington where the meme grew and developed at parties, receptions, and gatherings among those hungry for power and without ethics. Some gave the project’s goal the name “New World Order.” For lack of a better acronym for those who ascribe to the concepts of neocon colonialism, I will just lump the group who signed, ascribed to, and followed the fundamental ideas set forth in the PNAC as the “PNAC” or the “Cabal”. Membership is confirmed by adoption of the meme, not by formal initiation. For many in the Cabal, they may not even comprehend the reality of their joining or membership, but nevertheless, actually are members. From my view, this group includes almost all of the establishment members of the group Colonel Lang has named the Borg, including most from the Bush-Cheney group, through Hillary, to Obama as one of its most sophisticated players.
My new view of the PNAC as a cabal for world domination first focused when a SST commenter linked me to an article by Andrew Horybko (http://stanjestvari.com/2014/12/05/andrew-korybko-the-color-revolution-model-an-expose-of-the-core-mechanics/ and ultimately to Andrew Horybko’s book, Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach to Regime Change. (eBook available on Amazon Kindle for cheap.) From there, I followed-up with some works by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, The Kagans, and some discussions of the perversion Gene Sharp’s theories of “non-violent” struggle to accomplish violent subversion and some articles and lectures on www.csis.org. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Sharp http://www.aeinstein.org/
The intellectual heart of the project to the establish The New World Order and the strategy of achieving it is Brzezinski’s key idea, of a Balkanized Crescent. This concept is built on Halford John Mackinder’s concept of the Asian Heartland as the Pivot of History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_of_History. The fundamental principle of Balkanizing-the-Crescent is that in a nuclear world where it is too dangerous to take direct action against Russia, Russia can be weakened by the creation of chaos in its near neighbors. By creating chaos in its neighborhood (Russia’s “Rimland” using Mackinder’s name) in a Balkanized Crescent, Russia is forced to act to protect its interests in its Rimland and is weakened thereby. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimland The necessity of Russia (né the Soviets) tamping out the nearby fires thereby weakens Russia’s power and freedom of action to the benefit of the U.S. and the global power of its Cabal leaders. Moreover, given the centrality in the Crescent of competing proto-regional hegemons centered around Arabia and Iran, in Kissinger’s words, a pair of Sunni and Shiite Crescents, chaos in those sub-Crescents can prevent the development of either Arabia or Iran from obtaining hegemony in the region. As an added benefit, Israel is contained by being caught in the middle.
Gene Sharp, who, after studying Gandhi, developed a series of processes and formulas for using small, well-funded groups to destabilize countries from within. The logic of the PNAC Cabal expands this idea all across the coastlines from the Indian Ocean, across the Mediterranean and up around to the Baltic Sea; this is the Crescent to be balkanized under the Colour Revolution meme and the dream of the PNAC.
An amalgam of the ideas presented by these thinkers seems to gel into a theory of using various types of provocateurs, special forces, spies, NGOs, community organizers, paid peasant soldiers, and a comparatively small amount of money to work towards destabilizing the Balkanized Crescent. Andrew Horybko has given the strategy a usable meme name, Colour Revolution. Horybko makes an interesting argument that the Balkanize-the-Crescent strategy is being actively and currently pursued by the US in the present to further the goals set forth last century by the PNAC clique who still dominate the execution of American foreign policy. See, http://csis.org/publication/russia-and-color-revolution ; https://consortiumnews.com/2015/11/17/lost-on-the-dark-side-in-syria/
As I reviewed these disparate works they have raised a question in my mind as to whether the real actions of the United States are, in fact, a consistent application of Korybko’s explication of the Colour Revolution meme and strategy? Is current American foreign policy stuck in the, now mythical, bi-polar Cold War Era meme of Russia [the Soviets] against the West and is America’s goal not peace, but to surround Russia [subconsciously, the old Soviet Union boogeyman] with Brzezinski’s Balkanized crescent of chaos, focused upon weakening our now dissolved adversary, the USSR and even Europe, to promote total American world domination?
Listen to any lecture or read the papers by the Kagans, Brzezinski or Kissinger and the old Cold War meme still resonates loudly. Many of these incriminating materials are available on the CSIS.org web site. If we are still captured by the Soviets v. US meme, or if the cabalists do indeed seek to obtain total world domination, then the Balkanize-the-Crescent strategy becomes clear: The apparent contradictions of supporting ISIS and Sunni militias at the same time makes sense. Neither will be crushed, both will simultaneously be supported and subverted. All protestations to the contrary are merely psyops.
Using a perversion of Sharp’s insights and formulas as the tactical tool for expression of the strategic goal of total domination, destabilize everything around Russia so Russia will act to expend resources to stabilize its immediate neighborhood and thereby become weakened by attrition. And, just for good measure, include Europe in the destabilization plan to keep the Europeans subservient and in tow by flooding it with refugees and provoking the skinheads with targets for their xenophobic rage.
If this Balkanize-the-Crescent strategy is the real strategy, it has been profoundly successful. The Crescent around Asia’s Rimland has been destabilized through a masterful series of Colour Revolutions and supported insurgencies going back to the Carter Administration’s first support to the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan when Brzezinski enticed the Soviet Union into a fatal quagmire. The strategy has continued up until the present as we send arms to the “moderate” jihadists in Syria, all the while supporting the Iraqi Army and the Shia militias trying to fight the brothers of the “moderate’ jihadists in Syria and helping KSA to bomb Shia Houthis in Yemen.
Application of this principal means that we truly have no allies and no friends because we subvert them all.
The whole process in the MENA can be visualized as a stoking and damping of three fires, Jewish, Sunni, and Shia; making sure all burn hot, but none burns brighter than the others, while making sure that the three consume all of the fuel, so none becomes overly fierce so as to escape confinement. Russia is intended to suffer burns from all three.
Like plying an alcoholic with booze, we have paid billions into Israel to enable the Zionists to torture and oppress the Palestinians and punish Lebanon in order to guarantee an abiding cancer of Muslim anger against the Jews that spreads it festering seed throughout all of MENA. We have destabilized Israel’s enemy Iraq and have armed its Shia masses who have ethnically cleansed much of Iraq, concentrating the Sunni in fanatical hell holes. We have covertly encouraged ISIS while arming JAL so together, they can destabilize Syria and Iraq. We have armed Turkey and KSA to entice each of them to founder into the Cauldrons of Syria and Yemen and to breed the seeds of their own civil wars. At the same time, we have created an epidemic of opium and a tsunami of migrants and refugees from Syria and Afghanistan into Europe that will most certainly destabilize that entire continent for decades. Iran is countered by a Sunni stronghold that will not go away and that will challenge it for decades even if it is forced into an underground guerilla movement. We have promoted the KSA while all the time knowing it was funding and growing the Wahhabi faith and poisoning a generation all over Asia and Africa with the virus of Salafist Jihadism and now funding the extension of settlements in the West Bank. We have supported fascists in Ukraine to defeat a democratically elected government friendly to Russia and left Ukraine in turmoil and dissent. Russia has willingly allowed itself to be sucked into lengthening wars of attrition in Syria and Ukraine that will be followed by a longer, tumultuous, costly attempt at a post-war stabilization process that can never occur because all of those who could create a follow-up civil society are either dead or gone. Our successfully “Balkanized Crescent” now extends from Sweden to Yemen and everything in between from the Sub Saharan Africa up through Italy, Greece, Hungary, Romania, and the steppes of Ukraine to the Arctic Ocean.
In all, the condition on the ground today supports a Grade of A-Plus for the strategists and tacticians of the Cabal executing the Colour Revolution process. The future for years is simply chaos within the West Asian Rimland far into the future. All of this gained for a mere $75.00 dollar a week paycheck for a few thousand peasant fighters with no employee benefits and a hugely profitable boondoggle for the domestic defense industry supplying the replacement troops, hardware, and materiel. What a deal!
If the quest of the Cabal is continuation of the Cold War for world domination by proxy and not peace, then the facts listed in the scorecard question above all make sense. The U.S. supports all sides in the MENA conflict including even our Al Qaeda frenemies wherever they may be used be to maximize the operation of chaos. The strategy is arms for all as long as “they” are over-there and have sufficient willingness and talent to contribute to chaos sufficient to support the investment.
Even a few hits “over here” or in Paris are good because they reinforce the deception of the American People and increase support for the Cabal’s quest for world domination and increasing authoritarian control at home. Fear at home is good for the Cabal’s business of chaos for profit. An examination of the countries destabilized this century confirms the majesty, effectiveness, and extent of the operation.
We should have considered ourselves duly warned of the dreams dreamt by Jeb and Dick. They were proclaimed widely and openly as the destiny of American exceptionalism. Who could have imagined that in just eighteen years from the 1997 proclamation of the Project for a New American Century its program would have been so effective that all of Europe, western Asia, and North Africa would be so completely destabilized and vulnerable to the expanding chaos in a vast and growing Balkanized Crescent now sucking in Russia with a Siren’s song of reviving dreams of empire.
The problem is we have forgotten the progression of the classic Greek myth moves from destiny, through hubris, and, finally, to Nemesis and destruction. As President Bush’s aid, Narcissus, bragged, “[W]e'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." We are studying, but we will all pay the price as trillions of dollars’ worth of wealth is destroyed, millions are displaced, and more millions die—all to assuage some ancient fear of the mythical big-bad wolf prowling in the forests north of the Caucuses and the desire for world domination of a few evil people. We may slay the wolf, but most likely, we will be ruined first and the whole world may burn because of our quest.
One of the most helpful aspects of participating in this Committee of Correspondence is that it operates as a peer review of its participant’s positions and wacky ideas. This screed is written by a dilatant and as an armchair-general. I am sure I have missed a lot and failed to take many important facts and theories into consideration. As an American I surely hope I am in error here and that my observations are incorrect in some way. Else, I and the rest of the United States citizenry must take responsibility for being the blind authors of a vast continent of human suffering. If the deed has been done, PNAC Cabal intentionally created chaos in our name and on our dime and, perhaps with our consent.
Most here understand much more than I. Please convince me I am in error.
Yup, what you said, although,
I'm not sure it's an actual Plan, but more a case of mindset and opportunism, reacting to events, and throwing gas on fires.
Posted by: Brunswick | 18 November 2015 at 09:41 PM
ORIGIN
"Please convince me I am in error."
The fact that you seem to miss in the picture is the rise of China.
In the year 2000, the US was the one and only true leader of the world, leading with great distance, economically, militarily, even culturally. There was no real challenge to the US dominance over the world. There were very few countries in the world which did not accept global US hegemony, and they all were small, weak and poor, like Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Cuba and so on.
The following 15 years of wars changed that. While the US was occupied with devastating small opposing powers in the middle east to serve Israel's wishes - and even neglected infrastructure investments in the U.S., a real global challenge to US world hegemony has risen: China and the China-led drive for a multipolar world. Economic output of China measured in GDP on PPP basis has already surpassed that of the US and in terms of GDP on actual exchange rates China is also catching up. China has managed to cultivate a set of subtile allies, some of whom are quite powerful, like the BRICS, ASEAN and a newly expanded SCO. At the same time China has also built so strong economic ties with some major US allies, see as prime example South Korea, but also Japan, Australia, and Germany, that some of these US allies seem more verbal than real US allies now. One may say, that the US is still the greatest power on earth, and it's likely correct, but what is very clear, is that the edge with what the US led has clearly become smaller in the last 15 years, economically, culturally - think of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo - and even militarily the Chinese-Russian-alliance seems to have catched up a bit.
So, if the aim was to break US hegemony over the world, neglect infrastructure and other public investments in the US to weaken the US, and facilitate the rapid rise of a major foreign challenge to US hegemony, than the CABAL policy of spreading chaos has served the US well.
Posted by: Bandolero | 18 November 2015 at 10:47 PM
Pepe Escobar has been writing about the strategy of destabilization for some time and has a book on it, too — The Empire of Chaos. Part of this strategy is the current American "lead from behind" strategy of getting others to do the dirty work, on the cheap if possible.
It's become clear to the US leadership that voters don't want to expend blood and treasury on anything that they cannot see accruing immediate benefit to themselves. So they have to be keep afraid rather than greedy for domination.
What you have missed is the endgame, which is partitioning Russia and China into smaller "democratic" states so that they can never challenge US global hegemony in the future. "Democracy" is really an American euphemism of plutonomy, and "freedom" means freedom for US business and finance to operate under rules that America chooses, that is, the people that run America.
These folks are contemplating 1000 year empire with their descents in the seats of power.
Now that Russia and China are aware of the plan, we'll see where it goes.
What could go wrong?
Posted by: tjfxh | 18 November 2015 at 11:07 PM
Origin,
Much of your description of events is correct. The question is whether there are any other possible explanations for these developments. I do not know the answer, but I think that question is worth considering. Especially by people who have much better knowledge of the US.
As for Bandolero's objection re China, I don't think it's conclusive. After all, the US has just recently turned towards China, and started putting a "crescent" around it. (Though I agree with him that so far this has not worked too successfully).
What I find mind-boggling is the way public discourse in the US, especially in the media, is so totally 'brainwashed'. I don't think it was this bad under the Soviets or in Nazi Germany. It is this kind of thing that enables one to consider possibilities such as yours; after all, if the bulk of the population of such a vast, diverse country can be so lobotomized, anything is possible.
Posted by: FB Ali | 18 November 2015 at 11:25 PM
Have read this but have no idea who the author is. As noted before me, Pepe Escobar has been talking of this for a good while and Empire of Chaos a good term for it as well as his book title.
Posted by: Dominic | 18 November 2015 at 11:58 PM
OK, figured it out, ORIGIN is the author. Confusing, or at least confusing to me. Is this from a regular I've not noted before?
Posted by: Dominic | 19 November 2015 at 12:03 AM
Very interesting thesis, Origin. I am wondering how this thesis maps closer to home; Central and South America from the 70s through today. Interesting how the supposed danger of communism in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, etc. seamlessly morphed into the 'War on Drugs' with similar results. I am reminded of this today due to the re-emergence of Duane Clarridge, member of the Iran-Contra cabal, who ordered the mining of Nicaraguan harbors, now engaged as Ben Carson's foreign policy advisor.
Posted by: DeWitt | 19 November 2015 at 12:09 AM
loved the article, just spent 7 months in Vietnam. how did that debacle fit into the authors narrative? i do not understand how the endless war in MENA will end up any differently than Vietnam with total defeat for America. simply said if we had done nothing in Vietnam, we would all be better off. i would suggest the same situation exists in MENA better to withdraw military involvement and offer humanitarian aid
Posted by: ralph | 19 November 2015 at 12:34 AM
Origin,
How do you fit America's increasing irrelevance in South and Central America, an area once totally domnated by us, into this picture?
Posted by: Bill H | 19 November 2015 at 12:54 AM
RE chaos:
have no way of knowing if this is on the Wurlitzer yet.
Honduras detains Syrians bound for U.S. with doctored Greek passports
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/19/us-france-shooting-honduras-idUSKCN0T72UE20151119#wPTcYd2xsEX9JyxT.99
and then what? .... and THEN what? ... and so on.
Posted by: rjj | 19 November 2015 at 01:39 AM
Origin,
I believe that your narrative is basically true. The contradiction that is best seen is the fact that the Western citizens are being killed by radicalized Islamists but the White House places a higher priority on removing Assad and refuses to join Russia to eliminate the Islamic State. My position is that since the end of the draft, the ruling elite are contemptuous of the people. Propaganda, surveillance and torture are necessities for control. Endless wars are intentional. The foot soldiers are neo-Nazis and the Jihadists. The new world war makes money, assures promotion, spreads chaos and keeps Israel secure.
Posted by: VietnamVet | 19 November 2015 at 02:47 AM
This post is a wonder and many thanks for its existence. I have studied Washignton and it minions since the 1st grade and now 73 and still studying Washington and trying to understand and learn about its minions.
To some extent US FP is like SITUATION ETHICS with no real ethics or overarching strategy or catechism.
The long wars, hot and cold, with the dictators caused the US to learn many lessons from its opponents mostly bad ones. We became our enemies in many ways. And now the contradictions are just too great to bridge or even paper over.
We [US] may be about to prove that government of the people, by the people, and for the people does not last because of its internal contradictions. Even David Hume and Adam Smith and Marx may have accurately focused on greed destroying CAPITALISM.
Time will tell!
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 19 November 2015 at 03:50 AM
There is an alternative - no conspiracy, just a cock-up on a truly monumental/global scale. A conspiracy would require too many people with disparate positions but common objectives to come together to make it work and could not be kept secret.
The current situation was born out of hubris, arrogance, ignorance, incompetence, delusion, infantilism, and vanity among the Washington Borg that has not been challenged by the subservient MSM.
These characteristics are all quite visible in this article from The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/as-france-seeks-a-grand-coalition-obama-is-wary-of-allying-with-russia/2015/11/18/c2f98030-8e1d-11e5-baf4-bdf37355da0c_story.html
Posted by: Ghost ship | 19 November 2015 at 05:25 AM
The creation of a Muslim state (Bosnia) could be useful for the destabilization of Europe. Why did Germany push so hard for its creation? Have wondered if there is anything to the story the US flew Mujahadeen and Chechen fighters into Bosnia to help bring about that states creation.
Posted by: euclidcreek | 19 November 2015 at 06:37 AM
Actually, the idea of the so-called "chaos strategy" has been around for awhile. Personally, while I think the idea makes some sense (if one should never let a crisis go to waste, then one should start crises as often as possible), we should be wary of making (evil) geniuses out of fools.
Since none of the "masterminds" of our failure to stop 9/11, invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and start our "Long March" of the various "color revolutions" (although they seem to end in the same color, black), the sad fact may well be that we have nothing but serial failures by people who are deluded into thinking the they truly control the world. So, since the truly deluded (and the intellectually and morally corrupt) cannot be relied upon to examine their own failures, nor can we for some reason bring them to account for those failures, nor will anyone even replace them, we see first one disaster that must be addressed with another disaster, and so on . . . . Otherwise, someone will have to be held to account (intellectually or criminally) and "we can't let that happen."
The same thesis of the never-ending lunacy and stupidity can be applied to modern economics as well.
How can this happen? I think the answer is as old as humanity: the concentration and abuse of power. The mechanisms that would otherwise have forced an accounting have all become corrupted by the concentration of ownership and control of our politicians and media. So, the strategy is less about a conscious plan to destabilize the world as it is the plan to retard the stabilization of the world for selfish reasons.
I've been wondering if America will soon be the 21st Century Carthage.
Posted by: David Lentini | 19 November 2015 at 07:25 AM
Origin, the author, is at last opening his eyes.
Mine were opened during the very sidelined conflict in Sri Lanka, I have to find time and energy (going in my dusty files) to tell the story. It looks old and past but in my educated opinion it is still an untold case study.
Teaser, you will find your favorites: Hilary Clinton, David Milliband (Blair M of FO) and Bernard (R2P)Kouchner, ex Gauleiter of Kosovo.
I really have to do it, and properly, it involve, 28 years of war on terror, 120.000 deads and self styled internationnal community meddlings.
Posted by: Charles Michael | 19 November 2015 at 07:58 AM
Sometimes I think in conspiratorial terms about the seeming perversely contradictory aspects of American foreign policy as described in this essay and I think then that all of this is deliberate and part of a fiendish plot. But most of the time I think the policies of both subverting and supporting various actors, to all work at cross purposes, are a reflection of the seriously schizoid character of our national culture. If you look at a range of things being done by govt. both national and regional, you see many examples of policies working at cross purposes. Some of the babble coming from officials, press, and public intellectuals is loaded with cross talk and one realizes that these points of view represent constituencies who all end up "getting their way" to an extent and the result is chaotic. Does this sound muddled? I don't mean it to be.
Posted by: A. Pols | 19 November 2015 at 08:35 AM
"A conspiracy would require too many people with disparate positions but common objectives to come together to make it work and could not be kept secret."
Hardly a secret, there have been books written about it, for example TRAGEDY and HOPE by Carroll Quigley, although that book only covers events up to the 1960's. Great insights into how power gets what it wants.
Anyway, it wouldn't be a conspiracy it would be a plan.
Posted by: paulj | 19 November 2015 at 08:57 AM
Me? I like to keep things simple and doing such normally screws up Murphy. So while I find this writing intriguing and very well thought out. I rather refer to this strategy as the "Who's On First" strategy. There is a piece of me that really wants to believe that some where in the academic bowels of the NSC lies the Marx Brothers.
Posted by: Herodotus | 19 November 2015 at 09:43 AM
It appears you have given the subject some serious "Ponder Time" Origin. Hope to see you again here soon. I'm glad to see that the connections are being made and that the links are emerging from the smothering insulation blanket of the "Conspiracy Theory" label. The fact that Clarridge is Carson's FP advisor is chilling. Another old operator has recently emerged from deep in the shadows without a peep from the U.S. MSM. So many of these Cold War operators where connected in the past. I do not think it is coincidence that they seem to have 9 lives.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/nugan-hand-bank-mystery-michael-hand-found-living-in-the-united-states-20151107-gkthas.html
I can't help but wonder how many other "assumed dead" are lurking in those same shadows. Always enjoy my "reading time" trips to SST. I'll take bets that any attempt at extradition of Michael Hand will be used as tinder to warm the brandy.
Posted by: MEP | 19 November 2015 at 09:56 AM
Origin,
I'm afraid that I can't convince you that you're in error because I don't think you are. I can add another item, which didn't seem to make sense at the time, to your de-stabilization list. The proposed basing of missiles in former Warsaw Pact countries under the absurd pretense of protecting Europe from a missile attack by Iran.
Regarding de-stabilization of the areas around The southern and western periphery of Russia, I wonder whether there is a longer range goal of the balkanization of Russia itself. A fragmented Russia, with the natural resources of a very large part of the Asian continent, would be easy pickings and that which is broken asunder will not be put back together.
WPFIII
Posted by: William Fitzgerald | 19 November 2015 at 10:24 AM
A root cause of our nation's arrogance today I believe is the never ending narratives that come out of WWII. There are so many conventional wisdoms that everyone, including our politicians believe. One of those is that a mistake was made to not enter WWII earlier, and that the America First movement, a movement to keep us out of the war was a bad thing. Because things turned out so well for the US after WWII, few really try to think it through. What if we had entered the war before Germany attacked the Soviet Union? Would Germany still have attacked the Soviet Union? Would we and Britain have been the sole enemy of Germany? Would we have had to bear the brunt of the German army instead of the Soviets? Would we have taken 10 million military dead instead of 300K? Would the war have not ended until the atom bomb was perfected and used on Germany? Personally, I think we should thank God for the America First movement and the fact that they kept us out of the war until attacked by Japan.
Posted by: FND | 19 November 2015 at 10:36 AM
A root cause might just be desire for power. See https://lobelog.com/the-mindless-militarism-of-max-boot/
Constantly shifting of support to different Iraqi factions is designed to prevent the emergence of a functioning Iraqi state.
No wonder the Borg is so frightened of Putin.
Posted by: Matthew | 19 November 2015 at 11:46 AM
Overall this rings true. However, I am curious how you can state that Israel is to be contained by the PNAC plans when a significant number of the PNAC members are Jewish? Do you conclude that the PNAC deems Israel to be a threat?
Posted by: tim s | 19 November 2015 at 12:26 PM
"Conspiracy" is a question quencher - like "cynic" or mis- and anti-whatever [the "whatever" varies with place and time].
Chaos/destabilization is as much a part the statecraft toolkit as force. See Arthashastra (ca. 150 BCE) for the how-tos of weakening powerful neighbors and maintaining dependency in clients.
Looking for answers to "WTF?" came across Keynes' chapter "The State of Opinion" [at link]. His language and tone make for a slog but the effort pays off. Snips below link.
https://archive.org/stream/revisionoftreaty00keynuoft#page/n15/mode/2up
[snips]
"It is the method of modern statesmen to talk as much folly as the public demand and to practise no more of it than is compatible with what they have said ...
A preference for truth or for sincerity as a method may be ... inconsistent, in politics, with practical good.
....
...there are, in the present times, two opinions; not, as in former ages, the true and the false, but the outside and the inside; the opinion of the public voiced by the politicians and the newspapers, and the opinion of the politicians, the journalists and the civil servants, upstairs and backstairs and behindstairs, expressed in limited circles. In time of war it became a patriotic duty that the two opinions should be as different as possible; and some seem to think it so still."
[/snip]
EXCEPT THAT statesmen are out of production - the few remaining relics have been unpersoned and replaced with the functional equivalents of political commissars.
Posted by: rjj | 19 November 2015 at 12:26 PM