Financial Collapse Leads To War
Submitted by Dmitry Orlov via Club Orlov blog,
[With the new year, a sea change seems to have occurred in the financial markets: instead of “melting up,” the way they used to, they have started “melting down.” My original prediction is that this will lead to more armed conflict. Let's see if I was right.]
Scanning the headlines in the western mainstream press, and then peering behind the one-way mirror to compare that to the actual goings-on, one can't but get the impression that America's propagandists, and all those who follow in their wake, are struggling with all their might to concoct rationales for military action of one sort or another, be it supplying weapons to the largely defunct Ukrainian military, or staging parades of US military hardware and troops in the almost completely Russian town of Narva, in Estonia, a few hundred meters away from the Russian border, or putting US “advisers” in harm's way in parts of Iraq mostly controlled by Islamic militants.
The strenuous efforts to whip up Cold War-like hysteria in the face of an otherwise preoccupied and essentially passive Russia seems out of all proportion to the actual military threat Russia poses. (Yes, volunteers and ammo do filter into Ukraine across the Russian border, but that's about it.) Further south, the efforts to topple the government of Syria by aiding and arming Islamist radicals seem to be backfiring nicely. But that's the pattern, isn't it? What US military involvement in recent memory hasn't resulted in a fiasco? Maybe failure is not just an option, but more of a requirement?
Let's review. Afghanistan, after the longest military campaign in US history, is being handed back to the Taliban. Iraq no longer exists as a sovereign nation, but has fractured into three pieces, one of them controlled by radical Islamists. Egypt has been democratically reformed into a military dictatorship. Libya is a defunct state in the middle of a civil war. The Ukraine will soon be in a similar state; it has been reduced to pauper status in record time—less than a year. A recent government overthrow has caused Yemen to stop being US-friendly. Closer to home, things are going so well in the US-dominated Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador that they have produced a flood of refugees, all trying to get into the US in the hopes of finding any sort of sanctuary.
Looking at this broad landscape of failure, there are two ways to interpret it. One is that the US officialdom is the most incompetent one imaginable, and can't ever get anything right. But another is that they do not succeed for a distinctly different reason: they don't succeed because results don't matter. You see, if failure were a problem, then there would be some sort of pressure coming from somewhere or other within the establishment, and that pressure to succeed might sporadically give rise to improved performance, leading to at least a few instances of success. But if in fact failure is no problem at all, and if instead there was some sort of pressure to fail, then we would see exactly what we do see.
In fact, a point can be made that it is the limited scope of failure that is the problem. This would explain the recent saber-rattling in the direction of Russia, accusing it of imperial ambitions (Russia is not interested in territorial gains), demonizing Vladimir Putin (who is effective and popular) and behaving provocatively along Russia's various borders (leaving Russia vaguely insulted but generally unconcerned). It can be argued that all the previous victims of US foreign policy—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, even the Ukraine—are too small to produce failure writ large enough to satisfy America's appetite for failure. Russia, on the other hand, especially when incentivized by thinking that it is standing up to some sort of new, American-style fascism, has the ability to deliver to the US a foreign policy failure that will dwarf all the previous ones.
Analysts have proposed a variety of explanations for America's hyperactive, oversized militarism. Here are the top three:
1. The US government has been captured by the military-industrial complex, which demands to be financed lavishly. Rationales are created artificially to achieve that result. But there does seem to be some sort of pressure to actually make weapons and field armies, because wouldn't it be far more cost-effective to achieve full-spectrum failure simply by stealing all the money and skip building the weapons systems altogether? So something else must be going on.
2. The US military posture is designed to assure Americans of their imagined “full-spectrum dominance” over the entire planet. But “full-spectrum dominance” sounds a little bit like “success,” whereas what we see is full-spectrum failure. Again, this story doesn't fit the facts.
3. The US acts militarily to defend the status of the US dollar as the global reserve currency. But the US dollar is slowly but surely losing its attractiveness as a reserve currency, as witnessed by China and Russia acting as swiftly as they can to unload their US dollar reserves, and to stockpile gold instead. Numerous other nations have entered into arrangements with each other to stop using the US dollar in international trade. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't take a huge military to flush one's national currency down the toilet, so, once again, something else must be going on.
There are many other explanations on offer as well, but none of them explain the fact that the goal of all this militarism seems to be to achieve failure.
Perhaps a simpler explanation would suffice? How about this one:
The US has surrendered its sovereignty to a clique of financial oligarchs. Having nobody at all to answer to, this American (and to some extent international) oligarchy has been ruining the financial condition of the country, running up staggering levels of debt, destroying savings and retirements, debasing the currency and so on. The inevitable end-game is that the Federal Reserve (along with the central banks of other “developed economies”) will end up buying up all the sovereign debt issuance with money they print for that purpose, and in the end this inevitably leads to hyperinflation and national bankruptcy. A very special set of conditions has prevented these two events from taking place thus far, but that doesn't mean that they won't, because that's what always happens, sooner or later.
Now, let's suppose a financial oligarchy has seized control of the country, and, since it can't control its own appetites, is running it into the ground. Then it would make sense for it to have some sort of back-up plan for when the whole financial house of cards falls apart. Ideally, this plan would effectively put down any chance of revolt of the downtrodden masses, and allow the oligarchy to maintain security and hold onto its wealth. Peacetime is fine for as long as it can placate the populace with bread and circuses, but when a financial calamity causes the economy to crater and bread and circuses turn scarce, a handy fallback is war.
Any rationale for war will do, be it terrorists foreign and domestic, Big Bad Russia, or hallucinated space aliens. Military success is unimportant, because failure is even better than success for maintaining order because it makes it possible to force through various emergency security measures. Various training runs, such as the military occupation of Boston following the staged bombings at the Boston Marathon, have already taken place. The surveillance infrastructure and the partially privatized prison-industrial complex are already in place for locking up the undesirables. A really huge failure would provide the best rationale for putting the economy on a war footing, imposing martial law, suppressing dissent, outlawing “extremist” political activity and so on.
And so perhaps that is what we should expect. Financial collapse is already baked in, and it's only a matter of time before it happens, and precipitates commercial collapse when global supply chains stop functioning. Political collapse will be resisted, and the way it will be resisted is by starting as many wars as possible, to produce a vast backdrop of failure to serve as a rationale for all sorts of “emergency measures,” all of which will have just one aim: to suppress rebellion and to keep the oligarchy in power. Outside the US, it will look like Americans blowing things up: countries, things, innocent bystanders, even themselves (because, you know, apparently that works too). From the outside looking into America's hall of one-way mirrors, it will look like a country gone mad; but then it already looks that way. And inside the hall of one-way mirrors it will look like valiant defenders of liberty battling implacable foes around the world. Most people will remain docile and just wave their little flags.
But I would venture to guess that at some point failure will translate into meta-failure: America will fail even at failing. I hope that there is something we can do to help this meta-failure of failure happen sooner rather than later.
(28 votes)
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1. The US government has been captured by the military-industrial complex, which demands to be financed lavishly. Rationales are created artificially to achieve that result. But there does seem to be some sort of pressure to actually make weapons and field armies, because wouldn't it be far more cost-effective to achieve full-spectrum failure simply by stealing all the money and skip building the weapons systems altogether? So something else must be going on.
This comment COMPLETELY loses the point! Of course it would be better for the one man at the top to simply steal the money. But what about the thousands below him, and the millions who work for them? They want money as well. The reason that we have so many wars is that there is a huge and powerful section of our community which makes its living out of wars and war equipment manufacture. Win or lose, success or failure is unimportant to this sector - they just want to keep making drones and getting paid.
Exactly, and I'm surprised that Orlov missed out on that. No kleptocracy can survive unless its stakeholders down the chain get their share.
The US is run by incompetents. Its election campaigns show how lousy its selection process is. Its military cannot survive ground contact and it needs aerial bombardment on a massive scale to hold onto territory.
It has no political plan when destroying nations - it had none in Germany 1945 as JCS1067 showed. It was manipulated by Morgenthau (Jewish) and Harry Dexter White (Communist) into starving the German population until Stalin offered himself as the saviour of the German people and fear of Communism winning forced a rapid re-think in DC to JCS 1779 and rebuilding Germany.
Iraq is a disaster because Rumsfeld could not think beyond the edge of his desk. Afghanistan is a disaster because Gorbachev's offer to put a proper regime in place agreed with US once Russia left was ignored and ISI went nuts.
Syria has been destroyed by USA and UK.
Libya was destroyed by France and USA and UK
It is pretty clear these invaders unleashed by Erdogan onto Europe will be killed. There seems no prospect of getting rid of them otherwise, which strongholds they will take is hard to say, but civil war looks a distinct future in France, parts of Germany and UK
A small amendment to your excellent post. The reaction of the American public to the Morgenthau proposal to in effect exterminate the German people also played a role in its rejection.
"Let's suppose a financial oligarchy has seized control of the country......"
Suppose??????
Sometimes I don’t understand what Dmitry Orlov is talking about?
One can only talk about failure if one knows the objective. What is the U.S. objective? One simple objective is to have long, not necessarily winnable, sustainable wars so that money is constantly being tunneled into the Military Industrial Complex as replacement for the so-called ‘Cold War’ which had the same effect. So the Afghan war was and still is a great success. One more clearer objective is defined by the ‘Wolfowitz Doctrine’ The Wolfowitz Doctrine is the unofficial name given to the early version of the Defense Strategy for the 1990s: The Regional Defense Strategy http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/naarpr_Defense.pdf report for the 1994–99 fiscal years. It was later released by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in 1993. It brazenly advocates that America do everything in its power to retain its global hegemony and superpower status, including ensuring that Russia, China, Iran and other regional powers – but especially Russia – be prevented from attaining enough power to seriously challenge the US. In short, it’s another US blueprint for total global supremacy. http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/wolfowitz-doctrine-us-plan-global-supremacy/ Project for a New American Century (PNAC – September 2000) http://cryptome.org/rad.htm is a further workout of that Wolfowitz Doctrine.
From that Wolfowitz Doctrine doctrine we can easily sea that it’s imperative to keep Europe and Russia apart and prevent them from working together. Hence an Ukraine coup, financed by the U.S. took place and when the Germans and The Netherlands weren’t sure about Russian sanctions a passenger plane was downed on Langely's orders which helped to install the sanctions in no time. Again a great success. But this doesn’t bring down Russia immediately so more had to be done. Russian income has to be paralyzed and Russia spending has to be heightened via war entanglement. Russia is entangled into two wars now at least with Syria and the Ukraine and with these low oil prices I don’t have to explain what is happening with Russia’s income. Those low oil prices ensued when Skull & Bones Kerry paid a visit to the Saudis who are also involved in the Syrian war against Russia with the U.S. and Saudi funded ISIS. The MSM covers up this fact by saying that Saudis efforts are directed against U.S. shale gas.
One side effect of this could be regarded as a failure since the U.S. doesn’t bother about it’s deficits and prints money like there’s no tomorrow, to make this all possible, undermining dollars’ confidence. But some say that this is an objective on it’s own namely to destroy the dollar to bring in the SDR as worlds one (NWO) currency.
This fucking article PISSES ME OFF>>>>>> FUCK THIS GOVERNMENT AND THE LAW! FUCK THEM http://www.infowars.com/state-confiscates-veterans-kids-over-medical-marijuana-ptsd-treatment/
OBAMA SHOULD BE RIPPED OUT OF THE FUCKING WHITE HOUSE, Just ask his own security? HE IS A FUCKING TRAITOR!
USELESS FUCKING CUNTS! THERE WILL BE NO WAR JUST A WAR ON POLITICIANS AND THIS FUCKED UP LAW! FUCK OFF YOU IGNORANT FUCKING MORONS>
THIS COUNTRY IS FUCKED! FUCKING LOSERS! THIS IS UNJUSTNESS! FUCK THE POLICE! They want to start a war on drugs again! BRING IT THE FUCK ON!
WE NEED FUCKING JUSTICE, NO ONE DESERVES TO LOSE THEIR KIDS OVER WEED, WEED hasnt killed anyone, its fucking harmless. They use it to introduce harm to an otherwise Harmless situation. FUCK OFF YOU IGNORANT CUNTS! FUCK THE FUCK OFF!
THIS IS WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THIS COUNTRY, I SEE NO OTHER SOLUTION.
THIS IS WAR! YOU WANT A FIGHT YOU GOT IT! THE GOOD PEOPLE IN OUR LAW ENFORCEMENT NEED TO STAND UP AGAINST THE PIGS!
HEY CHRISTIE YOU FAT FUCK IS THIS WHY YOU DONT WANT TO LEGALIZE WEED SO YOU CAN "TERRORIZE" OUR VETS... FUCK OFF YOU FAT FUCK! YOU WANT TO TELL ME WHATs GOOD FOR ME... LOOK IN THE FUCKING MIRROR YOU PIG! GET YOUR HANDS OUT OF THE COOKIE JAR!
WE NEED TO GUT THIS FUCKING SYSTEM BEFORE THERE IS ANY MORE UNNECESSARY SUFFERING! PERIOD! IS THIS HOW WE DEAL WITH THIS SHIT?
I am going to tear these guys a new fucking ASSHOLE! GO TRUMP! JUST SAY NO TO ANOTHER FAT FUCKING GLUTTON IN THE WHITE HOUSE!
This VET fought for our freedom and WE let our GOVERNMENT TAKE HIS... WE ARE PATHETIC!
YOU MAD,BRO?
I predicted back in 2009 that when QE finally failed, the politicians would have no alternative but to take us to war.
If we do go to war with Russia, I hope the first missile that hits the U.S. takes Washington DC off the face of the map.
I want these war-mongering, neo-cons to get a taste of their own medicine.
Sad days for Amerika.
I predicted back in 2009 that when QE finally failed, the politicians would have no alternative but to take us to war.
If we do go to war with Russia, I hope the first missile that hits the U.S. takes Washington DC off the face of the map.
I want these war-mongering, neo-cons to get a taste of their own medicine.
Sad days for Amerika.
I predicted back in 2009 that when QE finally failed, the politicians would have no alternative but to take us to war.
If we do go to war with Russia, I hope the first missile that hits the U.S. takes Washington DC off the face of the map.
I want these war-mongering, neo-cons to get a taste of their own medicine.
Sad days for Amerika.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpeK4iI5BoM
http://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/opposition.cfm
I agree with the diagnosis of insanity, and the post presents a great synopsis of the failures. But as tempting as it is to look for method to the madness, based on Hanlon's razor, I'm skeptical of the "financial oligarch" theory. But I certainly hope, whatever is going on behind the scenes, that America has had a belly full of these neo-con losers.
I remember when Richard Pearle and his neo-con buddies goaded Georgie Porgie into whipping up the public to back the Iraq War using lies, damn lies and statistics. That's when this string of failures started, and we've had sixteen straight years of their delusional strategy, during which hundreds of thousands have died needlessly, eight years each under both wings of the UniParty.
Like him or hate him, the only candidate with whom there is any chance of throwing the neo-cons out on their butts from State and Defense is Trump. Any of the others from either side of the aisle and the stupid will continue, guaranteed.
Uhh...been at war for 15 years now, so the author is a little behind things. Question is: what's next? I'm guessing military dictatorship.
Only a military coup will work and that's not going to happen as there is no evidence that America is bored with war. On his departure, General Dempsey implied a certain discontent within the armed services but nothing remarkable.