Roaming charges on a benighted planet

Yesterday I met a friend for coffee. He and I have similar takes on neoliberalism and the death throes of 500 years of Western hegemony: its political systems inadequate for the challenges facing humanity, and the species we’ll take out with us; its media incapable of confronting power where it most matters, hence of speaking truthfully on the nature of those challenges.

My friend said that prior to October 7 –  yes, that one – he’d felt he had a good understanding of global events but this had been slipping away in the two years since. My response was that an overarching grasp of neoliberalism in a dying hence triply dangerous empire is essential to avoid being overwhelmed by oceans of detail. On this we agreed, while noting the everpresent danger of reductive oversimplification.

Why is everything kicking off everywhere? To take one example, is it just oil – more a means of leverage than vital resource for an energy rich superpower – that drives US acts of murderous piracy on Venezuelan fishing boats in the name, ridiculous in more ways than one, of The War On Narcotics? Or is such transparent thuggery a Monroe Doctrine reassertion; a reminder to a South America cutting deal after Belt & Road construction deal with Chinese operators that this is Washington’s fiefdom, with Beijing and Moscow unwelcome?

To take another, is it just uranium yellowcake driving the response of the US – on the one hand a beneficiary of France’s expulsion, on the other fearful of Chinese and Russian presence – to a decade of upheaval in the Sahel? Or does this too go continent-wide as a 21st century version of colonial Europe’s Great Game plays out in asset rich Africa?

(Though this analogy breaks down for the reason that, unlike 19th century Britain and Russia in Eurasia – two powers with broadly similar imperial aims – the rivalry between the US led West and China is more than that of competing powers. It is one between very different models of capitalism.)

And what of Central Asia with its unruly “Stans”? Should we take a microscope to each, at risk of drowning in detail as we weigh claim after propagandised claim while disregarding the bigger picture – extending westwards into Europe and southwards to Iran, Afghanistan and a Middle East powder keg – of the Eurasian project of a New Silk Road bypassing the one area where the empire continues to enjoy clear advantage; maritime supremacy and its power to disrupt global trade?

We could go on. We could speak of the battles looming over Greenland. Of Arctic drilling rights. Of the way the excesses of a dying empire have a nasty way of being visited on the imperial hub as the metropolis itself sees liberal democracy, always illusory, slip from view in ways not even industry strength gaslighting can conceal. We could speak, as to some extent I do, of America’s use of compradors, both in Asian semi-colonies like the Philippines and junior imperialisms like Australia – analogous to that in, respectively, Ukraine and Europe – to ‘contain’ China Rising.

These things and much besides are intimately related. How does a minnow like me, a minnow like you, keep all in view, all in mind?

Over at CounterPunch – long neglected by me, a once daily visitor – co-editor Jeffrey St. Clair has or had a regular column called Roaming Charges, a play on words linking cell phone pricing to calling out ruling class devilry. It adopts a tone of thinking aloud – another pun! – that trades depth for range, order for connectivity, in meandering but readable takes on the global sitch.

I’m minded to do likewise. Watch this space.

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