Karl Denninger explains how the imperial USA’s interventionist foreign policy is leading up to a Syracuse moment for the US empire:
It was only a matter of time before our so-called foreign policy turned into a serious problem with someone who can punch back.
For decades the United States has arrogated to itself the capacity to tell other nations who they should have as leaders. Who must run said nation, and who may not. The alliances that are to be coddled, and those that are forbidden. This is preposterous, of course, in that national sovereignty is precisely that, yet we have for decades believed we have the “righteous authority” to issue such diktat.
The CIA has toppled some 50 governments over time. Some more-or-less openly, some on the down low. Iran is an infamous one that ultimately blew up in our face. Deciding that the Iranian government was unacceptable because it expropriated the property of a British company, not even a US concern, we interfered, toppled the government and installed the Shah. This ultimately led to the Iranian revolution and the seizure of hostages at our Embassy, never mind a whole bunch of other terrorism.
We are very anti-narcotic and anti-serious drug — except, of course, when the use of the money generated suits us. Then its “oh well” or “oh, that’s sad”, even if the people that die from said drugs are in the United States, and they often are. Oliver North and the cocaine trade that was at the center of Iran-Contra anyone?
The United States was the initiator of events that led to the war in Ukraine. We were fully behind the overthrow of the government there back at the time of Maidan less than a decade ago. Said government was incorrigible, but that’s none of our business, right up until it apparently is and someone gets a wild hair in their backside about where someone’s using the money — or really, really likes the idea of being able to launder some as a US interest. Anything that gets in the way of that is, of course, unacceptable.
But for Maidan there would be no war in Ukraine. But for our continued attempts to do what we did with Turkey and missiles right near Russia there would have been no Cuban missile incident either. Yes, that was a crisis, but it was our making — not the USSR’s. Would you sit back and let some foreign nation put nuclear missiles in Mexico within a few minutes flight time of LA?
Didn’t think so.
Fundamentally the Ukraine problem lies there.
His analysis is correct, although I consider it to be partial and historically incomplete. Here is my not-unrelated perspective: the US empire, like most late-stage empires, is currently run by foreigners who have obtained power and influence through words, money, and the naivete of the native people. Those foreign rulers are now in the process of discovering the massive difference of being a parasite on another people and actually being responsible for all the various challenges of governing a major world power.
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
It should be no surprise that the endeavor is going about as well as it did for the adopted gamma child who is suddenly given responsibility to provide for and protect the entire neighborhood. The challenge is not just beyond his abilities, it is beyond his imagination. And now the people who have never successfully managed a single state the size of Delaware are intentionally seeking direct conflict with the oldest and most successful civilization on Earth as well as with the second-greatest military power in human history.
The odds are not good.