It’s not something it can come out and directly say, because admitting it sees itself as the rulers of the world would make it look tyrannical and megalomaniacal, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
The Wall Street Journal has an article out titled “U.S. Aims to Thwart China’s Plan for Atlantic Base in Africa“, subtitled “An American delegation wants to convince Equatorial Guinea against giving Beijing a launchpad in waters the U.S. considers its backyard.”
The article quotes the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy saying, “We’d really, really not like to see a Chinese facility” on the Atlantic, and discusses “American concern about China’s global expansionism and its pursuit of a permanent military presence on waters the U.S. considers home turf.”
The Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi has discussed the irony of WSJ yelling about China’s “global expansionism” over a potential military base in Equatorial Guinea without applying that label to the U.S., when the U.S. has hundreds of times the number of foreign military bases as China. Antiwar’s Daniel Larison wrote an article back in December eviscerating the ridiculous claim that a military base some six thousand nautical miles from the U.S. coastline could be reasonably framed as any kind of threat to the American people.
But what really jumps out is the insane way the U.S. political/media class routinely talks about virtually every location on this planet as though it is a territory of the United States.
The Wall Street Journal referring to the entire Atlantic Ocean as “America’s backyard” and “waters the U.S. considers home turf” follows a recent controversy over the U.S. president proclaiming that “Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard.” This provoked many references to the so-called “Monroe Doctrine”, a nineteenth-century imperialist assertion that Latin America is off limits to any power apart from the United States, effectively declaring the entire Western Hemisphere the property of Washington, DC.
It also follows another incident in which Press Secretary Jen Psaki remarked on the ongoing tensions around Ukraine that it is in America’s interest to support “our eastern flank countries”, which might come as a surprise to those who were taught in school that America’s eastern flank was not Eastern Europe but the eastern coastline of the United States.
The Chinese government’s strategic ambition has expanded so that it now aims to dominate the entire world in military and economic power, according to Antony Blinken, whose country has 800+ bases around the world to China's four.https://t.co/OX3SmCYA7k
— Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) February 10, 2022
The casual way these people say such things reflects a collectively held worldview that you won’t find on any official document or in any schoolchild’s textbook, but which is nonetheless a firmly held perspective among all the drivers of the modern empire: that the entire world is the property of the U.S. government. That the U.S. is not just the most powerful government in the world but also its rightful ruler, in the same way Rome ruled the Christian world.
It’s not something they can come out and directly say, because admitting they see themselves as the rulers of the world would make them look tyrannical and megalomaniacal. But it’s certainly something they believe.
They’re about as obvious about it as could be. They make almost no effort to conceal it. And yet you’ll still get empire apologists like Michael McFaul saying nonsense like this:
There was a time, not long ago, when imperial powers like UK, France, Portugal etc claimed their colonies as their "sphere of influence." Thank God we didn't listen o them back then. So why now is it ok to let Russia exercise a sphere of influence over its former colony, Ukraine?
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) February 7, 2022
McFaul knows very well that the U.S. is an imperial power and that it demands a very large “sphere of influence”.
Would you like to see a picture of America’s sphere of influence? Here you go:
To live in the western world is to be constantly inundated with made-up stories about tyrants who want to terrorize the world while living under a globe-spanning power structure that is actually terrorizing the world. It’s just so bizarre watching these imperial spinmeisters try to frame nations like China and Russia as freakish and backwards while working to literally rule the world like a comic book super villain.
The U.S.-centralized empire is quantifiably the single most destructive and evil power structure in today’s world. We shouldn’t want anyone to rule over the entire planet with an iron fist, but these monsters are the very least qualified among us to do so.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Her work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following her on Steemit, throwing some money into her tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of her sweet merchandise, buying her books Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Antony Blinken: Is he the same Blinken as in Winkin, Blinken and Nod?
You bet!
“That the U.S. is not just the most powerful government in the world but also its rightful ruler, in the same way Rome ruled the Christian world.”
There is one big difference between Rome and the United States ruling the world. Rome was good at it.
What you say is sadly and terrifyingly true. This empire can’t fall fast enough, or better, silently enough (that ‘devilish’ ‘god-hating’ communist Soviet empire caved in rather gracefully. I guess capitalist imperialists know how to fight to the finish cause they have something so valuable to fight for: the workers’ surplus value. A pathetic joke if it weren’t so terribly destructive.
Many say US power is on an decline, but where are the proofs of it?
So many look only ar their own needs are and the economy within US,
That in the very near future we will be seeing a restructuring of economy that will see majority of people with a declining standard of living does not mean the Sovereign power of.US nation will weaken or fail.fall..
In fact it will only enhance that power and give greater GDP to its military Industrialist structures.
Far less restrictions upon its military use, more re cruited and possibly a new Voluntary Draft secondary force of youths.
This reset will place all powers of social structuring to economic policy to Central Power.
The Consumerist economy for all is a massive fail and is no longer needed.
A very few Corporations will exist without financial hindrances as noone than top 5000 worldwide corporations can supply all governments funding and more thanmanufacture the needs of top 40% of every nation und umbrella of a new world.
Tightening currency under one world economy digital good world wide with domestic econ o mics coinage oly good within each nations borders.
Say as an example US government devalued our wages 50 % and raised cost of food, water sewer energy, or gas;80% how many.americans would qut working ?
Gov will set low universal wages,, prices of all goods imported or exported in order to keep a balanced World Coinage based on precious metals .
US will stillbe most powerfully or in worst case be equal to China India, Russia will never reach top dog ranks.
Space too ……………….. apparently.
“So why now is it ok to let Russia exercise a sphere of influence over its former colony, Ukraine?”
1. Ukraine was never a colony, but a co-founder of the USSR with Russia.
2. Russia wants the opposite of the “sphere of influence US-style/NATO hostility”, but a neutral, peaceful neighbor.
3.The Russian point of view is not allowed to be heard at all on US media, and Russophobic experts(!) like McFaul are wheeled in to give their poisonous lies.
Back in the 1980s, I remember Ronald Reagan characterizing the island of Grenada as “America’s back yard.” Maurice Bishop, then the Prime Minister of Grenada shot back, “Grenada is nobody’s back yard.” The island, which had a population of about 120,000, was invaded by the United States military, the largest in the world, and Reagan characterized the overthrow of the Grenadian government as a great victory. So, the attitude of American elites that the rest of the world is America’s property, colony, “back yard” is not new–not by any means. This is just an example during my own life. It goes back much further than that. Read Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket”, where he describes being a “gangster for capitalism”, overthrowing the government of Guatemala for the benefit of United Fruit (which was repeated in 1954), and much more.
Where would we be today if the Axis powers had been victorious? If we became isolationist, do you believe a benign power would fill the void?
Americans are good people. It’s the self-serving political/corporate class which had betrayed the American Ideal. It has been going on since way before the “War Between the States”.
The defeat of the Nazi’s and Imperial Japan was a good thing, but that was over 75 years ago. A lot has happened since then, and the world has changed. The US isn’t universally perceived as a benign power. The Americans are a good people, but so are lots of non-Americans. The US doesn’t have an inherent right to garrison the entire planet at will, and you don’t have to be an isolationist to appreciate this fact.
I wasn’t suggesting the U.S. is a benign power. I suggested that if the U.S. “pulls back” do you think it would be replaced by a benign power.
Hypothetically, which country or countries do you think would fill the void as a benign power?
For the record, I don’t condone being the world’s policeman, but I don’t thing surrendering to the mulitnational corporate class is the answer, either.
Of course there are no hedonistic and.self absorbed Americans.
I don’t know how it is in your neighborhood, but in my diverse neighborhood, we all get along, have jobs and respect each other.
It is the political class, who are only in it for the money and power who have betrayed us. Candidates are sold to us by PR firms like so much merchandise. There is no left or right. They both are working for themselves and NOT in your nor my best interests. Divide and conquer is the oldest trick in the book.
“if the Axis powers had been victorious” – but they weren’t, thanks largely to the sacrifice by the Soviet Union of at least twenty million of its own people. Your assumption was that the USA was responsible for defeating Nazi Germany. If the USA hadn’t joined the fight, I’m sure the Soviets would still have won. And what is the “American Ideal”? If we even cursorily examine the USA’s history, that ideal must be stealing land and wealth for its ruling class.
It was the USA that gave the Russians the tools of war and the training to implement them. True, the USA turned its immediate attention to Japan after Pearl harbor, but as Hitler found out, it’s foolish to fight a two front war.
The American Ideal has been misused by the “ruling class”, yes, but my suggestion was: the people of the USA are good and moral, as are most people in the world.
I have traveled quite a bit through the lands of the Western Pacific, and from my experience, all I have met had the same goal: Food, shelter, clothing, raise a family and be left alone.
As for “stealing land and wealth” that is another complex argument for another time. I suggest reading about Lewis and Clark and the reason for their expedition, along with any information about the Sioux and the Comanche. Crazy Horse and Custer by Stephen Ambrose is a good read along with Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne. It’s about the Comanches, the most powerful Tribe in American History. They made war a sport, and ‘stole’ horses (wealth) and land from their enemies.
Probably the victorious Axis powers would have turned on each other fairly quickly, as the USA and USSR did in reality.
Empires come…empires go…The Western ’empire’ is on its decline.