{"id":265413,"date":"2024-07-01T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=265413"},"modified":"2025-01-10T13:49:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T13:49:51","slug":"the-impending-collapse-of-the-u-s-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/07\/the-impending-collapse-of-the-u-s-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"The Impending Collapse of the U.S. Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world as we know it is run by an exclusive class of U.S. racketeers who operate with virtually unlimited weapons and money, Matt Kennard\u2019s book reveals.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

18 Jun 2024 <\/em>– The public perception of the US empire, at least to those within the United States who have never seen the empire dominate and exploit the \u201cwretched of the earth,\u201d is radically different from reality.<\/p>\n

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These manufactured illusions, ones Joseph Conrad wrote so presciently about, posit that the empire is a force for good. The empire, we are told, fosters democracy and liberty. It spreads the benefits of \u2018western civilization\u2019.<\/p>\n

These are deceptions repeated ad nauseam<\/em> by a compliant media and mouthed by politicians, academics and the powerful. But they are lies, as all of us who have spent years reporting overseas understand.<\/p>\n

Matt Kennard in his book The Racket<\/em> \u2013 where he reports from Haiti, Bolivia, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Mexico, Colombia, and many other countries \u2013 rips back the veil. He exposes the hidden machinery of empire. He details its brutality, mendacity, cruelty and its dangerous self-delusions.<\/p>\n

In the late stage of empire, the image sold to a gullible public begins to entrance the mandarins of empire. They make decisions based not on reality, but on their distorted visions of reality, one coloured by their own propaganda.<\/p>\n

Matt refers to this as \u2018the racket\u2019. Blinded by hubris and power they come to believe their deceptions, propelling the empire towards collective suicide. They retreat into a fantasy where hard and unpleasant facts no longer intrude.<\/p>\n

They replace diplomacy, multilateralism and politics with unilateral threats and the blunt instrument of war. They become the purblind architects of their own destruction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the late stage of empire, the image sold to a gullible public begins to entrance the mandarins of empire.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Matt writes: \u201cA couple of years after my initiation at the Financial Times<\/em> a few things started to become clearer. I came to realise a difference between myself and the rest of the people staffing the racket \u2013 the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) workers, the economists in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continues, \u201cWhile I was coming to understand how the racket really worked, I started to see them as willing dupes. There was no doubt they seemed to believe in the virtue of the mission; they imbibed all the theories that were meant to dress up global exploitation in the language of \u2018development\u2019 and \u2018progress\u2019. I saw this with US ambassadors in Bolivia and Haiti, and with countless other functionaries I interviewed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey genuinely believe the myths,\u201d he concludes, \u201cand of course are paid handsomely to do so. To help these agents of the racket get up in the morning there also exists, throughout the West, a well-stocked army of intellectuals whose sole purpose is to make theft and brutality acceptable to the general population of the US and its racketeering allies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. carried out one of the greatest strategic blunders in its history, one that sounded the death knell of the empire, when it invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The United States carried out one of the greatest strategic blunders in its history, one that sounded the death knell of the empire, when it invaded and occupied for two decades Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n

The architects of the war in the George W. Bush White House, and the array of useful idiots in the press and academia who were cheerleaders for it, knew very little about the countries being invaded. They believed their technological superiority made them invincible.<\/p>\n

They were blindsided by the ferocious blowback and armed resistance that led to their defeat. This was something those of us who knew the Middle East \u2013 I was the Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times<\/em>, speak Arabic and reported from the region for seven years \u2013 predicted.<\/p>\n

But those intent on war preferred a comforting fantasy. They stated, and probably believed, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, although they had no valid evidence to support this claim.<\/p>\n

They insisted that democracy would be implanted in Baghdad and spread across the Middle East. They assured the public that U.S. troops would be greeted by grateful Iraqis and Afghans as liberators. They promised that oil revenues would cover the cost of reconstruction.<\/p>\n

They insisted that the bold and quick military strike\u2014\u201cshock and awe\u201d\u2014would restore US hegemony in the region and dominance in the world. It did the opposite. As Zbigniew Brzezi\u0144ski noted<\/a>, this \u201cunilateral war of choice against Iraq precipitated a widespread delegitimation of U.S. foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The war state<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The US since the end of World War II has become a stratocracy<\/em> \u2013 government dominated by the military. There is a constant preparation for war. The war machine\u2019s massive budgets are sacrosanct. Its billions of dollars in waste and fraud are ignored.<\/p>\n

Its military fiascos in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East disappear into the vast black hole of historical amnesia. This amnesia, which means there is never accountability, licences the war machine to leap from military debacle to debacle while it economically disembowels the country.<\/p>\n

The militarists win every election. They cannot lose. It is impossible to vote against them. The war state is a G\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung<\/em>, as Dwight Macdonald writes, \u201cwithout the gods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government.<\/p>\n

Military systems are sold before they are produced with guarantees that huge cost overruns will be covered.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US public funds the research, development and building of weapons systems and then buys these same weapons systems on behalf of foreign governments.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Foreign aid is contingent on buying US weapons. Egypt. which receives<\/a> some $1.3 billion in foreign military financing, is required to devote it to buying and maintaining U.S. weapons systems.<\/p>\n

Israel, meanwhile, has received $158 billion<\/a> in bilateral assistance from the US since 1949, almost all of it since 1971 in the form of military aid, with most of it going towards arms purchases from US weapons manufacturers.<\/p>\n

The US public funds the research, development and building of weapons systems and then buys these same weapons systems on behalf of foreign governments. It is a circular system of corporate welfare.<\/p>\n

In the year to September 2022, the US spent $877 billion<\/a> on the military. This was more than the next 10 countries \u2013 including China, Russia, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom \u2013\u00a0 combined.<\/p>\n

These huge military expenditures, along with the rising costs of a for-profit healthcare system, have driven the US national debt to over $31 trillion<\/a>, nearly $5 trillion more than the US\u2019s entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP).<\/p>\n

This imbalance is not sustainable, especially once the dollar is no longer the world\u2019s reserve currency. As of January 2023, the US spent a record $213 billion<\/a> servicing the interest on its national debt.<\/p>\n

The empire at home<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The military machine, by diverting funds and resources to endless war, disembowels and impoverishes the nation at home, as Matt\u2019s reporting from Washington, Baltimore and New York illustrates.<\/p>\n

The cost to the public \u2013 socially, economically, politically and culturally \u2013 is catastrophic. Workers are reduced to subsistence level and preyed upon by corporations that have privatised every facet of society from health care and education to the prison-industrial complex.<\/p>\n

Militarists divert funds from social and infrastructure programs. They pour money into research and development of weapons systems and neglect renewable energy technologies. Bridges, roads, electrical grids and levees collapse. Schools decay. Domestic manufacturing declines. Our public transportation system is a shambles.<\/p>\n

Militarised police gun down mostly unarmed, poor people of colour and fill a system of penitentiaries and jails that hold a staggering 25 percent<\/a> of the world\u2019s prisoners although North Americans represent only 5 percent of the global population.<\/p>\n

Cities, deindustrialized, are in ruins. Opioid addiction, suicide, mass shootings, depression and morbid obesity plague a population that has fallen into profound despair.<\/p>\n

Militarised societies are fertile ground for demagogues. Militarists, like demagogues, see other nations and cultures in their own image \u2014 threatening and aggressive. They seek only domination. They peddle illusions of a return to a mythical golden age of total power and unlimited prosperity.<\/p>\n

The deep disillusionment and anger that led to Donald Trump\u2019s election\u2014a reaction to the corporate coup d\u2019\u00e9tat and the poverty afflicting at least half of the country\u2014have destroyed the myth of a functioning democracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe military machine, by diverting funds and resources to endless war, disembowels and impoverishes the nation at home.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Matt notes: \u201cThe US elite that has grown fat from looting abroad is also fighting a war at home. From the 1970s onwards, the same white-collar mobsters have been winning a war against the people of the US, in the form of a massive, underhand con. They have slowly but surely managed to sell off much of what the North American people used to own under the guise of various fraudulent ideologies such as the \u2018free market\u2019. This is the \u2018North American way\u2019, a giant swindle, a grand hustle.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continues, \u201cIn this sense, the victims of the racket are not just in Port-au-Prince and Baghdad; they are also in Chicago and New York City. The same people that devise the myths about what we do abroad have also built up a similar ideological system that legitimises theft at home; theft from the poorest, by the richest. The poor and working people of Harlem have more in common with the poor and working people of Haiti than they do with their elites, but this has to be obscured for the racket to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMany actions taken by the US government, in fact, habitually harm the poorest and most destitute of its citizens,\u201d he concludes. \u201cThe North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a good example. It came into force in January 1994 and was a fantastic opportunity for US business interests, because markets were opened up for an investment and export bonanza. Simultaneously, thousands of US workers lost their jobs to workers in Mexico where their wages could be beaten down by even poorer people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Self-immolation<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The public, bombarded with war propaganda, cheers on their self-immolation. It revels in the despicable beauty of U.S. military prowess. It speaks in the thought-terminating clich\u00e9s spewed out by mass culture and mass media. It imbibes the illusion of omnipotence and wallows in self-adulation.<\/p>\n

The mantra of the militarised state is national security. If every discussion begins with a question of national security, every answer includes force or the threat of force. The preoccupation with internal and external threats divides the world into friend and foe, good and evil.<\/p>\n

Those such as Julian Assange who expose the crimes and suicidal folly of empire are ruthlessly persecuted. The truth, a truth Matt uncovers, is bitter and hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose such as Julian Assange who expose the crimes and suicidal folly of empire are ruthlessly persecuted.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWhile rising empires are often judicious, even rational in their application of armed force for conquest and control of overseas dominions, fading empires are inclined to ill-considered displays of power, dreaming of bold military masterstrokes that would somehow recoup lost prestige and power,\u201d the historian Alfred McCoy writes<\/a>. \u201cOften irrational even from an imperial point of view, these micro military operations can yield haemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the process already under way.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is vital we see what lies before us. If we continue to be entranced by the images on the walls of Plato\u2019s cave, images that bombard us on screens day and night, if we fail to understand how empire works and its self-destructiveness we will all, especially with the looming climate crisis, descend into a Hobbesian nightmare where the tools of repression, so familiar on the outer reaches of empire, cement into place terrifying corporate totalitarian states.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire<\/em> is out now and available from Bloomsbury HERE<\/a>.<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
______________________________________________<\/div>\n
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\"\"<\/a> Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times,\u00a0where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief. He previously worked overseas for\u00a0<\/em>The Dallas Morning News,\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor, and<\/em> NPR. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 declassifieduk.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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