{"id":22332,"date":"2012-10-22T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T11:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=22332"},"modified":"2012-10-21T17:06:12","modified_gmt":"2012-10-21T16:06:12","slug":"toward-barbarism-us-imperialism-unleashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/10\/toward-barbarism-us-imperialism-unleashed\/","title":{"rendered":"Toward Barbarism: US Imperialism Unleashed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization.<\/em>
\n— Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet.<\/em><\/p>\n

With signs of a global economic downturn mounting, US aggression across the Middle East and North Africa ratchets up.\u00a0 And once again, US imperialism stands poised to swing open the gates of Hell.<\/p>\n

The choice presently confronting humanity, then, is one between imperialism on the one hand, and the struggle against imperialism on the other.\u00a0 It\u2019s a choice of socialism or barbarism.<\/p>\n

Global Capitalism Imperiled<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the IMF\u2019s World Economic Outlook<\/a> report released last week [October 2012], the \u201crisks for a serious global slowdown are alarmingly high.\u201d\u00a0 The report projects the world economy to expand just 3.3 percent this year and 3.6 percent in 2013\u2014both projections down from the IMF\u2019s July forecast.\u00a0\u00a0 As Joseph Davis, chief economist at the Vanguard Group, cautioned to the Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>, \u201cThe odds of a global recession are not fully appreciated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, for as the Financial Times<\/em><\/a> reports, the Tracking Indices for the Global Economic Recovery, the Brookings Institution-Financial Times<\/em> index of the world economy, finds severe problems \u201cin both advanced and emerging markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe global economic recovery,\u201d Brookings\u2019 senior fellow and index creator Eswar Prasad warned, \u201cis on the ropes.\u201d<\/p>\n

And though in its latest report the IMF continued to peddle the harsh elixir of austerity for the depressed economies of the euro zone periphery, the Fund also came to tacitly acknowledge the limits of austerity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe IMF now says global efforts to slash deficits and debt may have hurt growth because they occurred too quickly and too widely,\u201d the Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n

But with the limits of austerity as a means of resolving the present crisis apparent, the last remaining card for the capitalist elite to play in their attempt to regenerate global capitalism appears to be in unleashing the forces of \u201ccreative destruction\u201d wrought by military aggression.\u00a0 As Henryk Grossman warned in his Law of Accumulation<\/em><\/a>, \u201cThe destructions and devaluations of war are a means of warding off the immanent collapse [of capitalism], of creating a breathing space for the accumulation of capital.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is thus out of the need to renew the impetus for capital accumulation that the iron fist of US imperialism gains free rein once more across the full spectrum of what American neo-conservatives deem the \u201carc of instability.\u201d<\/p>\n

US Imperialism on the March<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, the Pentagon is readying military strikes in Libya in retaliation for the September attack on the US compound in Benghazi.\u00a0 As the paper reports, \u201cThe top-secret Joint Special Operations Command is compiling so-called target packages of detailed information about the suspects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPotential military options could include drone strikes, Special Operations raids like the one that killed Osama bin Laden and joint missions with Libyan authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em><\/a> <\/em>goes on to report that the Pentagon is also rushing to train and equip a 500 member Libyan commando force to be used to combat \u201cIslamic extremists\u201d within the country.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Pentagon has reportedly dispatched a task force of 150 military \u201cplanners\u201d and \u201cspecialists\u201d (i.e., special operations troops) to a Jordanian military base along the Jordan-Syria border.\u00a0 Speaking at a NATO conference in Brussels last week, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta<\/a> claimed that the task force was sent to help Jordan \u201cmonitor chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n

The specter of chemical weapons has been increasingly used as a pretext by the Atlantic powers to threaten military intervention into Syria.\u00a0 As President Obama declared in August, the use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces would be a \u201cred line,\u201d which would force him to change his \u201ccalculus\u201d on intervention.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce again, Western powers are digging deep for excuses to intervene militarily in another conflict-torn Middle East country,\u201d an editorial in the state-run Xinhua<\/em><\/a> news agency of China read in response to Obama\u2019s threat.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, as the New York Times<\/em><\/a> reported, discussions have already taken place over using the Jordanian-stationed US task force to help establish a buffer zone within Syrian territory.<\/p>\n

(In addition to the deployment of troops along the Jordan-Syria border, \u00a0CIA operatives are presently active along the Syria-Turkey border<\/a>, facilitating the flow of arms to rebel forces.\u00a0 Meanwhile, a recent report in the Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/a> noted that the US military is currently using aerial surveillance drones to monitor Syrian chemical weapon stockpiles.)<\/p>\n

Of course, the stepped up targeting of Syria cannot be decoupled from the joint Israel-US campaign against Iran.\u00a0 After all, as hawks Michael Doran and Max Boot argue in a New York Times<\/em><\/a> <\/em>op-ed, the first reason American intervention in Syria is now merited is because it \u201cwould diminish Iran\u2019s influence in the Arab world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The road to Tehran, we see, may very well lead through Damascus; although, the urge to fly non-stop to Tehran may just prove too strong to resist.<\/p>\n

Marching Toward Tehran<\/strong><\/p>\n

With Iran clearly in mind, the US and Israel are set to begin a massive three-week joint missile and air defense exercise later this month.\u00a0 The exercise, Business Week<\/a> <\/em>reports, will include 3,500 US personnel and 1,000 members of the Israel Defense Forces, making it the largest joint military exercise held between the two nations.\u00a0 The planned war game also occurs amid mounting speculation of a looming strike against Iran.<\/p>\n

According to a report in Foreign Policy<\/em><\/a> by David Rothkopf, the US and Israel are actively planning a joint \u201csurgical strike targeting Iranian enrichment facilities.\u201d\u00a0 Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official and Editor-at-Large of Foreign Policy<\/em>, cites his source as stating that \u201cthe strike might take only \u2018a couple of hours\u2019 in the best case and only would involve a \u2018day or two\u2019 overall.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strike, Rothkopf quotes an \u201cadvocate\u201d of an attack as stating, would have a \u201ctransformative outcome: saving Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, reanimating the peace process, securing the Gulf, sending an unequivocal message to Russia and China, and assuring American ascendancy in the region for a decade to come.\u201d\u00a0 This, of course, being the essence of the proverbial neo-con wet dream.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, Rothkopf even goes as far as to triumph the idea of a \u201csurgical strike\u201d as a potential October Surprise Obama could use to propel himself back to the White House.<\/p>\n

It appears now, however, that Rothkopf\u2019s \u201creport\u201d may have been little more than a plant by the Israeli embassy in Washington<\/a>.\u00a0 A move, perhaps, intended to further coerce Obama into adopting a more hawkish stance on Iran, while simultaneously serving to downplay the risks of an attack.<\/p>\n

Of course, peddling the notion of a so-called \u201csurgical strike\u201d on Iran is nothing particularly new.\u00a0 In March, Jeffrey Goldberg reported for Bloomberg<\/em><\/a> that Israeli talk of striking Iran had assumed a rather optimistic tenor.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne conclusion key [Israeli] officials have reached,\u201d Goldberg wrote after a trip to Israel, \u201cis that a strike on six or eight Iranian facilities will not lead, as is generally assumed, to all-out war.\u201d<\/p>\n

(One cannot help wonder if the Rothkopf and Goldberg share the same source.)<\/p>\n

Such assessments, though, are rather dubious, given that they directly contradict numerous assessments determining that any strike against Iran would quickly spiral into a regional conflict.\u00a0 A report earlier this year in the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, for instance, noted a war game simulation run by the Pentagon forecast that an Israeli strike \u201cwould lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Likewise, a September war game organized by Kenneth Pollack, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution\u2019s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, resulted in a dangerous escalation from both sides. \u00a0As the Washington Post<\/em><\/a>\u2019s David Ignatius reported, \u201cThe game showed how easy it was for each side to misread the other\u2019s signals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMisjudgment was the essence of this game,\u201d Ignatius continued.\u00a0 \u201cEach side thought it was choosing limited options, but their moves were interpreted as crossing red lines. Attacks proved more deadly than expected; signals were not understood; attempts to open channels of communication were ignored; the desire to look tough compelled actions that produced results neither side wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWar,\u201d as Clausewitz wrote, \u201cis the province of danger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toward Barbarism <\/strong><\/p>\n

US imperial dreams, however, are hardly confined to setting the Middle East ablaze.\u00a0 Imperial ambitions\u2014rooted in the capitalist logic of endless expansion\u2014are inherently limitless.\u00a0 Thus, we see the US today readying to propel the greater Middle East into the abyss, while simultaneously \u201cpivoting<\/a>\u201d to the Asia-Pacific in order to \u201ccontain\u201d a rising China.<\/p>\n

US imperialism, however, is destined for defeat (and sooner rather than later).\u00a0 The US, after all, can only use its immense military power to keep potential competitors in check for so long.\u00a0 The universal law of change cannot be held at bay by the barrel of a gun in perpetuity.\u00a0 As Lenin asked and answered in his pamphlet Imperialism<\/em>: \u201cIs it \u2018conceivable\u2019 that in ten or twenty years\u2019 time the relative strength of the imperialist powers will have remained un<\/em>changed? Absolutely inconceivable.\u201d<\/p>\n

But imperial powers are always dangerously deluded by the strength of their power\u2014impervious to its ultimate limits.\u00a0 As a George W. Bush administration official once remarked to the journalist Ron Suskind<\/a>: \u201c’We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality\u2014judiciously, as you will\u2014we’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\u2026and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

(One would be mistaken to believe that such hubris is not as present in the Obama White House as it was in the Bush administration.)<\/p>\n

Such arrogance from the power elite\u2014indicative of imperial rot\u2014is but a byproduct of the imperialist imperative of endless expansion and conquest.\u00a0 And it is this very imperative that today compels US imperialism towards igniting a military conflagration in the Middle East threatening to ensnare the global powers. \u201cA great cemetery,\u201d as Luxemburg warned nearly a century ago, awaits such a triumph of barbarism.<\/p>\n

The only means with which to elude such a miserable fate is found in the revolutionary power of working people to resist.\u00a0 As Luxemburg argued, escape from barbarism is only possible once the working class comes to seize \u201cits own destiny and escape the role of the lackey to the ruling classes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only genuine and enduring hope for humanity, then, lies is in the struggle for socialism.<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

Ben Schreiner – I\u2019m a freelance writer covering U.S. and international politics. Work has appeared in al-Akhbar English, Asia Times Online, Common Dreams, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Global Research, MR Zine, New Politics, NYTimes eXaminer, Socialist Viewpoint, War Crimes Times, Z Magazine, and others. I currently write a weekly column on U.S. and Middle East politics for Press TV. Contact via email at bnschreiner[at]gmail.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 workingleft.pt<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With signs of a global economic downturn mounting, US aggression across the Middle East and North Africa ratchets up. According to the IMF\u2019s World Economic Outlook report released last week [October 2012], the \u201crisks for a serious global slowdown are alarmingly high.\u201d According to the New York Times, the Pentagon is readying military strikes in Libya in retaliation for the September attack on the US compound in Benghazi in addition to the deployment of troops along the Jordan-Syria border, CIA operatives are presently active along the Syria-Turkey border, facilitating the flow of arms to rebel forces. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}