I took a week out to go fishing – or would have if I hadn’t quit fishing decades ago. These days vanning and camping does it for me. On my first morning, Sunday last, I awoke by the lovely Stour – one of five by that name 1 – near the mill on the outskirts of Dedham. That’s Essex – a stone’s throw from Suffolk, where I was to meet with Jackie on the morrow at a campsite near Woodbridge.
Switching on my phone I read of the attempted Trump hit and, over the next two days, checked commentators I trust. Says Jonathan Cook in Trump got a bloodied ear. US ‘political violence’ poses a far bigger danger to the rest of us:
Despite what the political class wants you to believe, “political violence” is as American as apple pie. The US empire was built on political violence, or the threat of it, especially after WW2. Ask the people of Vietnam, Serbia, Latin America, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Gaza.
The difference now is that Washington’s imperial grip is all too clearly weakening.
President Joe Biden is not alone in refusing to recognise this fact. He recently told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos: “I’m running the world.” But US elites are rapidly finding that the world is no longer prepared to submit. Washington’s international military arm, Nato, is being run into the ground by Russia in a proxy war in Ukraine.
Over at the Duran, Alex and Alexander were on the story by Monday afternoon. Though I find them a tad soft on Trump, even that’s a welcome change from the absurdities of pro Democrat media both sides of the Atlantic.
Quickest off the mark, based as he is in Bangkok, was Brian Berletic. Without committing to a conspiracy theory implicating secret services, 2 he was podcasting his take on Sunday, 07:00 UK time, on such anomalies as allowing Trump to appear next to a US flag. There are other ways of signalling one’s patriotism, he says, without giving a sniper at 300 yards so vital a heads-up on wind direction and speed. Other fishy stuff is perused and contextualised. Well worth the shade under nineteen minutes it asks of us.
More importantly I laid out my uninflated canoe on that slipway, only to find a critical part of my pump missing. My spirits revived when I donned walking boots for a consolatory riverside hike through beautiful Dedham Vale. I returned to find a particular kind of folk messing about on the river; the kind who check their kit before setting out.
Fast forward a week. Back at Steel City House I need to orient myself. A piece by Simplicius the Thinker, skimmed over coffee in sunny Suffolk outside the tent, has to be re-read, synthesised with other sources and shaped into a post on democracy.
Meanwhile a Naked Capitalism post of two days ago caught my eye: What Happens With the War in Ukraine if Trump Wins? Here I’m posting an exchange below that piece. Site founder and most frequent contributor, economist Yves Smith (a pseudonym with playful nod to Adam) at times engages below the line. This is one of those times.
carolina concerned July 19, 2024 at 9:05 am
I have questions about the underlying motivations for this conflict. It appears to me that calling it a proxy war between USA and Russia seems less accurate than reference to a proxy war between the military/industrial complex and Russia – with the emphasis on the MIC rather than USA and the emphasis on the industrial interests rather than military. The Ukraine conflict seems unlikely to be about the Ukraine as a physical entity, as much as an assault on the Russian political structure. The short term goal to foment a revolution in Russia was obviously fanciful, but asserting longer term political strain in Russia may not be. The goal in Ukraine may be to continue to pressure the Russian economy, and that would not encourage as near term settlement of the conflict. In this case, the ultimate fear of the MIC will continue to be that they are mortally frightened by China. The possible support of China seems to be their biggest fear.
Yves Smith July 19, 2024 at 9:55 am
I don’t agree that this is about the MIC. They have plenty of places to grift. This has to do with much darker, less rational forces, the US sense that it could remake the world after World War II. That is why we keep doing things that don’t make any sense and even worse are negative in terms of our geostrategic interests.
If this were just about the MIC, we would have backed off when we realized Russia had the upper hand militarily. Putting your credibility on the line, putting many of your best weapons in a burn pit, having Russia demonstrate the superiority of its arms across nearly all weapons categories….this is neither good for business nor maintenance of superpower status.
That impulse became pernicious after the fall of the USSR, when many seemed to internalize the idea that our ways were obviously superior and virtuous and should be imposed on others for their good. This sort of thing has a proud tradition, recall the Brits and French trying to impose not just their administrations on subjects, but also their language, religions, and values. It’s a form of evangelizing, not just creating cultural similarities for the purpose of enlisting locals to make control easier; it’s out of a deep seated belief that it would be better for them if they were more like us.
The US (as Jeffrey Sachs has explained long form) has long has a policy of preventing the rise of even regional power. This is why Iran drives the US nuts out of proportion to its importance. And I suspect but cannot prove that Iran drives us nuttier because a bunch of backwards looking guys in beards and black robes have proven to be technologically and politically very sophisticated.
US officials also act like they are playing Risk (again per Sachs), they overthrow regimes just to prevent anyone else from having them.
With Russia, we thought we had subjugated them. Even so, in 1997, with Yeltsin in charge, George Kennan, Kissinger and others warned v. NATO expansion east. They didn’t see Russia as a spent force as the US wanted to but a still very powerful player, presumably if nothing else because nukes.
Our efforts to keep down and better yet break up Russia are long-standing. Putin understood he had to find a solution to the Chechen war, for instance. If Chechnya succeeded in getting its independence, then Dagestan would be next, and other Muslim regions could get stroppy too. And we were most assuredly backing the Chechens.
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- The other four Stours are in Dorest, Kent (also lovely, and known to me from childhood), Gloucestershire and Warwickshire.
- I use “conspiracy theory” neutrally, to denote a theory positing a conspiracy. Not as a put-down. The veracity of some conspiracy theories is now beyond reasonable doubt, like the Tonkin Incident which allowed LBJ to take the US into war on Vietnam. Some CTs, such as that 9/11 did not happen, fail basic logic but 9/11 as inside job is less easily dismissed. A-priori dismissal of conspiracy theories is too often driven by ignorance and unjustified confidence in our media. How do I know? Been there, dunnit, got the t-shirt.