It wasn’t hard to foresee that those planning and executing U.S. foreign policy, lacking all imagination and anything remotely resembling courage, would prove incapable of an orderly transition to a multipolar world order.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with U.S. President Joe Biden in Kiev during a visit by the U.S. president, Feb. 20, 2023. (White House/Adam Schultz)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
It has been clear since the terror attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001 — the date I choose to mark a great turn in the global order — that America’s abdication of its postwar hegemony was to rank high among the 21st century’s defining events.
The questions from that day onward have been how the policy cliques in Washington would respond to such a change in America’s place in the community of nations and what they might do — how great the risks they would take — to avoid, or at least forestall, this world-historical shift.
How chaotically or otherwise, to put this question another way, would the arrival of a new, post–American world order prove?
We have just witnessed a week’s worth of shocking provocations as the U.S. and Britain escalate their proxy war against Russia under the pretense of defending Ukraine in a war that is already lost.
Washington and London — the latter with the former’s assent — have now authorized the grossly irresponsible regime in Kiev to fire American– and British-made missiles into Russian territory.
The Ukrainians wasted no time doing so. The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) launched a volley of U.S.–made ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles at Russian targets last Tuesday. A day later the AFU fired a similar barrage of British-made Storm Shadow missiles into Russian territory.
The degree of planning and coordination behind these attacks seems to me self-evident. Nobody in Washington, London, or Kiev is commenting on the targets hit, but these, too, were without question chosen after careful consultation.
Moscow has responded just as it said it would weeks ago. It now considers itself at war with the Western powers and, last Thursday, attacked a Ukrainian target with a new-generation hypersonic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
The message could scarcely be clearer — providing, I must add, one is capable of reading it accurately.
So we now have answers to the above-noted questions.
It was never difficult to foresee that those planning and executing U.S. foreign policy, lacking all imagination and anything remotely resembling courage, would prove incapable of an orderly transition to a multipolar world order.
After the Sept. 11 events, a continued commitment to American primacy was ineluctably going to prove a commitment to one or another degree of disorder.
The Biden regime’s latest escalation of its proxy war in Ukraine indicates the limits of this commitment: There are none.
We are now on notice that the world — bitter to write this — is condemned to unceasing chaos and violence so long as the American imperium’s ideologues are capable of mounting a resistance against against the world as it struggles to be.
The M57A1 Army Tactical Missile System missile is fired over the cab of an M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launcher, 2012. (U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
We know now the risks those devoted to prolonging the imperium’s final phase will take in defense of the no-longer-defensible: All risks are acceptable as they cling to power. They will risk another world war; they will risk nuclear annihilation.
We hear a lot these days about the Israeli doctrine known as the Samson Option, whereby the Israelis, if they thought themselves under an existential threat, would use their nuclear arsenal to bring the world down with them. Those freak-show terrorists running the Zionist state, you might say: Who or what could be more diabolic?
It is a reasonable question. But there is no longer any pretending as to the unique perversity of terrorist Israel and its Samson Option. America in its post–Sept. 11 phase — fearful, viewing itself as threatened by history itself — has just proved equally perverse, equally diabolic, equally given to contempt for the human cause.
There is a greater and lesser way to understand the U.S. decision to authorize the use of Western-supplied missiles against Russian targets. It is partly a matter of passing politics, this is to say, and partly a question of the dynamics of late-imperial ideology. Let us consider each.
It is certainly so, as Joe Lauria pointed out in Consortium News last week, that the immense recklessness of the U.S. decision to authorize the use of Western-supplied missiles against Russian targets reflects a failed president’s spiteful determination, on his way out of office, to undermine President-elect Trump’s announced intention to end the war in Ukraine.
U.S. President Joe Biden, right, greets president-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Nov. 13, 2024. (White House / Oliver Contreras)
I do not see how giving Kiev permission to use Western-made missiles (with Western military operating them) against Russia will do anything to alter Trump’s intentions. The only way such a gambit could work is by provoking Russia into a vastly expanded, vastly more dangerous war. This goes to my previously made point: No risk is too great if taking it will prolong the long U.S. assault on Russia in the name of American preeminence.
There is also Joe Biden’s pitiful desire to preserve his “legacy.” Biden was foolish beyond words when he settled on the subversion of the Russian Federation — is “subjugation” my word? — as the project that would engrave his name in the history books.
This is another lost war: Biden’s “legacy” lies in ruins even before he leaves one behind. The Man from Scranton will go down, as measured by the failures, dangers, and messes he leaves behind, as the worst-performing president in postwar American history.
We can fairly mark this down to Biden’s native ineptitude: Any careful review of his career reveals him to be — no apology for my word choice — very stupid. His declining mental state, which has received so much press in the months since he was forced to withdraw his bid for reelection, is a case of incapacity piled atop incompetence.
A little while back the Russians began referring to “the collective Biden” to take account of the reality that there is no way of knowing who makes the judgments and policy decisions commonly attributed to “the president,” or “Mr. Biden,” or “the White House.”
You might think it unbelievably irresponsible of the Democrats, and the whole of Capitol Hill along with them, to leave the United States without a capable president, but I propose a reconsideration:
While it is certainly irresponsible to leave the Oval Office vacant for many months, if not years, it is perfectly believable given the extent to which the Deep State (the national-security state if this makes you more comfortable) now runs U.S. policy — this not quite but nearly out in the open.
So far as one can make out, to dolly in on this point, Secretary of State Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, William Burns, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and a very few others form an inner circle that has been directing U.S. policy for much of Biden’s presidential term, either autonomously or by way of his nodding (literally) assent.
An outer circle, with input at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue but less operational authority, would include such figures as Samantha Power, who directs the Agency for International Development, Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
This is “the collective Biden” — so well coined, this phrase. Look at its members, and there are many more I have not named. These are the imperium’s praefecti, procurators and consuls. They have no interest in politics and want nothing to do with the citizenry. The empire is their ideology, and they are dedicated solely to extending its power.
And it is these more or less remote apparatchiks who form the collective Biden and who are yet more indifferent to the taking of unconscionable risks than the weak figure behind which they manage the empire’s affairs.
As many remarked after Russia began its intervention in Ukraine two years and nine months ago, Joe Biden started a war he cannot afford to lose. But Joe Biden will content himself with his Corvette and his sunglasses in a few weeks’ time.
The Deep State has a lot, lot more on the line at this point — not less, I would say, than the longevity of the American imperium. The people who form it are the true losers who cannot afford to lose.
It is impossible to know at this point what will come next now that the U.S., with Britain in tow, has authorized the long-range missile strikes.
We do not know, among much else, how the Deep State will field what efforts Trump may make to end the war. These people subverted his plans to improve relations with Moscow during his first term, we must remind ourselves.
But the extent of the desperation shared between the Deep State and Biden-the-outgoing-pol is very plain. The collective Biden reportedly did not inform the Pentagon before taking the missiles decision. It simultaneously announced plans to provide Kiev with anti-personnel land mines, the kind that blow combatants’ legs off and maim children who come upon them years or decades later.
This is not, to put the point mildly, the conduct of a policy clique confident it is in control of its destiny.
The Russian Response
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, and President Vladimir Putin, center, in 2017. (The Russian Presidential Press and Information Office, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Much has been made of the hypersonic missile, called the Oreshnik, the Russian military fired at a Ukrainian defense industry plant in the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk last Thursday — a day after Kiev fired its volley of British-made Storm Shadow missiles into Russia. Out came the shrieks in Western media that “Putin’s Russia” has again threatened to resort to a nuclear attack.
There is no question of the Oreshnik’s unusual, if not unprecedented power. It triggered explosions that lasted three hours, according to the first press reports. And it can indeed carry a nuclear warhead.
But I do not share the prevailing read of the Oreshnik’s first deployment — just as I have not shared any of the previous talk of Russia’s suppose threats to go nuclear. I would summarize the message the Kremlin may as well have scribbled in chalk on the Oreshnik’s fuselage as,
Let us remind you that we, on both sides, are nuclear powers. Let us introduce some sanity to the impasse to which you have brought us.
The televised speech President Vladimir Putin delivered last Thursday evening supports this interpretation. While there are likely to be more Oreshniks fired into Ukraine, the targets, like last Thursday’s, will be chosen for their military merit and Russia will continue to refrain from deploying any short– or medium-range missiles anywhere beyond Ukraine —depending, he said, on what the U.S. does next.
Per usual, the Russian leader has taken the long view — as we all should — and places Russia’s response to the crisis the U.S. and Britain just created in the historical context of the West’s long list of post–Cold War betrayals.
“It was not Russia but the United States that destroyed the system of international security,” Putin said, the latest of his many references to Washington’s withdrawal from various arms-control treaties since the Bush II administration.
Glenn Diesen, an editor at Russia in Global Affairs and among the wisest heads in matters such as these, published a piece last week in which he asserted that the West has “crossed the line between proxy war and direct war.” In it Diesen posed the question on everyone’s mind right now:
“How will Russia respond? There are several more steps on the escalation ladder before pushing the nuclear button. Russia can intensify strikes on Ukrainian political targets and infrastructure, introduce North Korean troops that were likely intended as a deterrent for a situation like this, strike NATO assets in the Black Sea and logistic centres in Poland or Romania, destroy satellites used for the attacks on Russia, or attack US/NATO military assets in other parts of the world under the guise of enabling other countries to defend themselves.”
I do not know the likelihood or otherwise of any of these projections. But it seems to me the collective Biden and the national-security apparatus behind it may have got the Kremlin in a Catch–22 of sorts.
So long as Russia exercises the restraint it now exhibits — let’s say so long as Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, remain the statesmen in the room — the U.S. and clients such as Britain are likely to press their campaign of provocations to the next step, and the step after that, and so on. This is the long road to America’s version of the Samson Option.
And if the only way to stop these provocations is to respond to them as the West intends — that is, to escalate into a state of risk no sane statesman would find acceptable — the Russian Federation could find itself in the very war it has resisted, over many years, entering upon. The short road to the Samson Option.
We can thank Joe Biden for leading the world to this perilous moment. But I don’t think Biden is diabolically intelligent enough to get this done on his own. And this is what ought to worry us most.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.
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Who’s responsible for the Ukraine war? Who’s driving escalation? Who tf invaded who?
Biden is certainly not ‘diabolically intelligent enough’ to do almost anything thing on his own at this point, and his successor is also not exceptionally equipped with real intelligence either, though his bombastic style is in a class of its own. His apparent choice of cabinet posts and advisers does not foreshadow any hope for a quick and peaceful resolution to a crisis that becomes more dangerous by the day. Most of us can only wait and watch.
I does my heart good to read Lawrence’s first sentence, especially because of his use of the word abdication. Those events were definitely the result of a government failure.
I agree pretty much a hundred percent with everything he writes to the end of line twenty down from the photo I mention below.
Twenty-one lines down from the photo of the ‘two peas in a pod”, Patrick mentions the Deep State and in parenthesis he refers to the national security state, “now runs U.S policy – not quite but nearly out in the open”.
From here to the end he repeatedly hammers home the point of just exactly who and how these (NEOCON / Zionist ?) fools directed, ‘the collective Biden’ into “quite the Fix” he currently finds himself in. Them silly Russians.
I have no real criticism of Lawrence’s effort here quite contrary. I like it and this needed to be addressed.
Having written my view of his work. and my enjoyment of the term the ‘collective Biden’ I must comment on his observation, about fourteen lines down from the, “now runs the U. S. policy phrase’, Patrick writes of sunglasses and a Corvette. I’m loving this stuff, I really am, but once again I find I cannot stop myself.
Just preceding the Vette comment we read ” Biden started a war he cannot afford to lose. ”
Believe me I’m not about to claim Bidden did anything but enter a war of choice, one he and no one else will be held accountable for.
Recently I wrote Biden had always been a yes man. I meant that. This anchors my argument of why the democrats got cornered by them selves, painting them selves into a corner, as it were. Way back when the Queeen of chaos lost to Trump, remember. They should have never ran her, but what do I know. When they did they outed the Duopoly, drove it into the sunlight, IMHO.
GHW Bush’s ghost returns to haunt, “we the people”, once again, as it did, IMHO, on 911.
Had we had analysts with any loyalty to the country assisting Joey, as I have said so many times this debacle could have been completely avoided. The U.S. pushed and pushed and cornered the Bear, Putin, who is no dummy much smarter say, than Hitler
Ten lines up from the photo of the Russian brain trust, those two lines speak volumes, starting with, “The Deep State has a lot, lot more on the line at this point . . . .”! We all had damned well get this straight, they damned well do have their asses in sling.
I’m thinking maybe it’s the U.S. of A.
My opinion is the domestic Deep State by having a totally misguided agenda has blown their cover. I have to admit I’m not sure how they ever figured this could end any differently. I would enjoy hearing the explanation that will never come.
Patrick I believe the national security state, the U.S. , domestic Deep State, an arm of the Global Deep State, has become compromised by the tentaculum of the Global Deep State. Those international old money bankers and such the U.S. owes trillions to and cannot repay anytime soon. ( My apologies to Danny Casolaro and Bill Hamilton of PROMIS / INSLAW OCTOPUS fame for using the term tentaculum)
This collective of ‘never say die’ parasites who are just as terminally mentally ill, as Binny Notinyahoo, having contracted a fatal dose of Greed for power complicated by some other unknown bug causing a lust for death and suffering need to be extinguished.
In the two lines following the inset paragraph Patrick opines his thought, ” . . . the collective Biden and the national security apparatus behind it may have gotten the Kremlin in a Catch-22 of sorts.”
With the utmost respect Patrick, please humor me. I feel the pregnant question to ‘collective Biden’ is , “do you idiots have the Bear or does the Bear have you? We are both caught in a Catch-22! History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme.
By honoring GHW Bush’s ” reneging on the option for the Russians to join NATO,cira 1990, the trap was set, the only act needed to spring it was for the Russians to be pushed to the breaking point. After Bill Browder et. al. raided and plundered the Russian economy, we all find ourselves the victims of the secret arm of our government.
I will leave 911 for another day. Suffice I feel 41 is the constant here. 1980’s, 1990, 2001 and the ghost of 41 haunts us again.
I’m simply sick and tired of these idiots and their bullshit!
Thanks CN
The significance of the Oreshkin missile is much greater than Patrick Lawrence suggests. Few people understand the kinetic force of a projectile striking a target at Mach 11 speed (i.e. 11 times the speed of sound) even without an explosive warhead attached. Such an impact can be as powerful as a tactical nuclear weapon. And each Oreshkin multiplies this effect with multiple warheads. The real significance for European nations is that all of them are within easy reach of Oreshkin missiles that can strike their cities, factories and military facilities in a matter of minutes.
Ponder that, European vassal state leaders. It’s time to look after the interests of your own people.
Alan has been paying attention to his credit. The laws of physics don’t lie, people do>
I intend to write my Senator when I finish here and advise his dumb ass that someone there needs to figure out the reality of the Oreshkin missile.
Could be the Senator needs to be enlightened.
Could Joe Biden declare himself a war president thus staying in office?
The only quibble I have——-> Why does P.L. take Trump’s demagogic bluster about “ending this war within 24 hrs.” as serious policy decision? ————- Michael Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security advisor, has said in TV interviews there will be a “seamless transition’ between administrations in its disposition toward Ukraine. —-
Latest rumors have Trump agreeing to continue sending weapons to Ukraine in exchange for no NATO membership for at least twenty years. —– and, UK/France are now in discussions about sending ground troops to Ukraine. —– European NATO members are poised to take more of the lead in the war (proxy, or not) against Russia. —- Let’s not mistake Trump for some kind of ‘peace maker”. The US imperium will not be walking away from Ukraine, where an estimated 4 to $7 trillion worth of rare earth minerals lie.
The NeoCons already tipped their hand on the attack on Trump’s plans to end the war.
They will accuse him of being another Biden – Afghanistan cut and run disaster.
The will accuse him of being weak and an inability to be the “deal maker” he claims to be, when Russia makes no land or other concessions in settlement negotiations.
NeoCons are betting that being called weak and ineffective and a Biden Afghan rehash will force Trump to up the ante and further escalate under the myth of creating leverage for a better deal. Absurd, but true.
US Neocon outlaws now hustle booby traps to Ukraine, anti-Russian-people mines meant to kill or maim future innocents like dragon’s teeth that seed future enmity while they “Trump-proof” military policy to ensure further escalation.
Guess that must mean, according to US democracy rules, that only the few, the highly placed (& bought) rulers may claim the freedom to risk everything with no debate. The fate of not only current generations but of their children & theirs & theirs rides on the outcome. Such a vaunted “democracy” to bet the house against a so-called bluff by an adversary they’ve deliberately misconceived & underestimated. On this totters a nation’s “national security”.
If it wasn’t shoved right in our faces I’d have to I’d have to conclude: you must be joking. Sadly, they think this is some kind of dark joke.
To hear members of the UK government, and some media commentators, talk about Russian retaliation in response to the attacks within Russia, they almost seem to welcome it.
Some of these people are absolute lunatics.
I am unfortunate enough to be living in France where Macron and his election losers still hold power and use more and more fools like “foreign minister” Jean-Noel Barrot to make worse and worse decisions. In line with Starmer and the monstrous Ursula, unelected President of the European Commission, we in the Land of Human Rights are 17 (?)minutes from Pres. Putin’s completely justifiable response to the ludicrous “scalp” etc pinpricks which could destroy us all. For what???
I don’t think that Trump had any intention to end the war in Ukraine. His incoming director of national security policy Sebastian Gorka has said Trump basically plans to tell Putin, to end the war or any aid we’ve given Ukraine so far will “look like peanuts.” Mike Waltz, his national security adviser, has said he has met with Jake Sullivan and the two administrations are working “hand in glove” during the changeover.
It will be a miracle if these idiots don’t get us all killed.
Didn’t Trump help us into the current position by ramping up US military aid to Kiev during his first term ?
He might pull the plug on Ukraine (and leave the resulting mess for Europe to deal with) but I suspect only because he wanted to redeploy resources to another war.
Yes, and Trump also pulled out of the INF treaty that had eliminated missiles like the one that just hit Dnipro/Dnepropetrovsk.
Unfortunately, I think the US was predestined to wind up where it is. It is the direct descendant of the European colonialist empires that slaughtered each other before they decided to set sail to “discover “ what other lands were out there. We know how they treated the natives of the lands they came upon. Our history is replete with forcing others to obey us or be killed. Has anything really changed? It’s the same government with the same supremacist ideology only armed with weapons that can end life itself. This is what the end of European colonialism looks like. It was never going to be pretty. May these lunatics reap everything they have sown and leave the rest of us in peace.
Well said!
“They have no interest in politics and want nothing to do with the citizenry. The empire is their ideology, and they are dedicated solely to extending its power.” Yep.
And we, the silenced majority, thought neolib usurpation of the D party and subsequent abandonment of labor to make the party safe for Wall St. was bad enough. Ceding us to an econopathy defining away destruction of human and natural resources as mere “externalities.”
Now we have total nightmare. A Dem admin. and, it seems, a D party captured by neocons. Bent on domination; the trillions that takes leaving no $$$ for infrastructure, better healthcare, or much of anything else that might serve the common good. Whatever it takes, including fighting endless wars to preserve their illusion of a unipolar world. Theirs is the only view allowed–a revival of the old religious doctrine that “error has no rights.”
We American peasants are merely to serve as sacrifices to their god of power and war. The rest of the world is expected to worship at that same altar or risk annihilation.
This is the Democratic Party’s legacy, … again! Remember Vietnam, Korea, WW II, WW I? How can antiwar progressives support that truly terrible political party? How can African Americans? How can Women? How can anyone not tied to the military industrial complex?
War and mass murder are entirely bipartisan policies. LBJ/Nixon, Vietnam. Reagan/Bush, dirty wars in Latin America. Bush II, Iraq, Afghanistan. Obama, Honduran Coup, and Hillary, Libyan coup. Trump, Bolivian coup. Biden, proxy war in Ukraine and the Palestinian genocide. Trump’s war mongers are licking their lips for war with China.
No party has stood against it. Anyone who tries gets thrown out of office.
It seems states need to have wars to establish their governance, and at times, individual politicians start wars to remain in power and avoid incarceration.
Marx proposed the eventual “withering away of the state”, but in the meantime we can certainly define them as untrustworthy and dangerous.
Thus reducing their prestige and our patriotism. We have but one planet to take care of, not a plenitude of waring states.
In some respects Washington’s like the drunk cowboy in the saloon waving a gun around and threatening everyone in sight. Everyone sane (China, Russia, etc.) treads carefully biding time until he passes out.
The most critical issue the world is facing is whether the Washington-Zio-militarist empire will fade away quietly into the good night, or rage, rage, rage against the dying light. The American populace plays a crucial role in this entire unfolding of events. Indeed, the rest of the world is counting on us.
Well written, Thanks.
Thanks. Of course I cribbed from Dylan Thomas.
I got a different message from the strike on the missile plant in Dnipro. If you happen to live in the same area as a factory that makes SCALP or Storm Shadow missiles, you might want to board up your windows.
If one was making a list of proportional responses to a NATO missile attack onto Russia, then one would consider it possible that hitting the factories that make the missiles might be one of the considered responses. The west made a big deal about it being a ‘nuclear’ missile, but perhaps the important part of the message was that it was a “medium range” missile. In other words, not an ‘intercontinental’, but one that has the range to hit Europe, including the UK and France. Hitting the factories that build the missiles is not only a ‘response’ that forcefully says ‘stop that’, but it also takes care of the problem by making sure there are no new missiles for awhile.
Russia just demonstrated that it has a missile, that can not be defended against, which was capable of taking out a missile factory. And the missile reaches the UK and France. People in the neighborhood might want to board up their windows.
We need to extend a famous list ….
War = Peace
Ignorance = Strength
Freedom = Slavery
Defense = Aggression
Now, when Oceania says it is ‘defending’ or has the ‘right of defense’, what is really happening is that Oceania is an aggressor or claims a right of aggression. Using of course its “Defense Department”, or its real name, the Aggression Department.
Great comments, I’m going to use the Oceania add-ons.
I agree. Plus I’m dinating another $50 to a brave and indispensible news and analysis source.