U.S. Militarism
With a new systemic cycle of capitalist accumulation on the horizon, Empire’s declining hegemon, the United States of America, is presently stirring up conflicts in the Euro-Atlantic region (against Russia) and in the Asia-Pacific region (against China) in order to “fix” the present over-accumulation crisis and firm up its position as global military muscle for its wealthy client states in Western Europe and East Asia.
Ironically, Germany and Japan, the very same countries that the U.S. defeated in World War II in order to achieve hegemony, are the most prominent clients of the U.S. Of course, there is nothing mysterious about this ironic turn of events. It is no secret that, following World War II, Germany and Japan were effectively rebuilt, reconfigured, and enriched as client states sponsored by the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. presently has more than 100 bases in Germany and Japan each, and more than 30,000 troops stationed in each country — significantly more bases and troops than in all of the many countries where the U.S. keeps bases and troops.
China and Russia, the two nations made out to be the primary antagonists of the U.S., are relatively poor countries in comparison to the U.S. and to U.S. clients in the Euro-Atlantic and Asia-Pacific.
The U.S. has ~4% of the global population but approximately ~40% of all persons with a million dollars or more in assets who form the richest ~1% of humanity. What’s more, there are more white Amerikkkaners belonging to the richest ~1% than to the poorest ~50%, 1 in 7 relative to 1 in 12.
Western Europe, with ~5% of the global population, has approximately ~25% of the richest ~1%.
The leading U.S. client states around the Pacific Rim (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) account for ~16% of the richest ~1% with only ~4% of the global population.
By contrast, China has ~10% of the richest ~1% with ~18% of the global population, and Russia has ~.006% of the richest ~1% and ~1.8% of the global population.
Yet the U.S., needing to drum up conflicts, is making relatively poor upstarts out to be dangerously wealthy rivals whose governments are capable of the most atrocious evils. The irony, of course, is that the U.S. and its two leading clients, Germany and Japan, are guilty of the some of the most heinous atrocities in all of human history, with their only competitors in atrocious behavior being other U.S. clients: the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
This is not to say that governments of China and Russia have clean consciences by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, China today is, in effect, an authoritarian imperialist patriarchy ruled by the Communist Party of China from a core group of wealthy cities and administrative divisions privileged with per capita GDPs similar to that of wealthy client states of the U.S. — the rest of China consisting of peripheral and semi-peripheral internal colonies. Russia is a similarly constituted imperialist patriarchy but, instead of being ruled by a central political party with an authoritarian ideology, Russia is ruled by cliques of oligarchs who made their wealth via the privatization of public industries that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Yet, still, the fact of the matter is that the Russian and Chinese empires are not the defining malicious actors with respect to the defining horrors of our deathly world of suffering: the War on Terra, the Late Davosian Holocausts, and the twin scourges of global apartheid and planetary ecocide. That the U.S. and its clients in Western Europe are the defining malicious actors with respect to the twin scourges of global apartheid and planetary ecocide is beyond dispute, and all indications are that the U.S. aims to double down on its malicious activity in stirring up conflicts against Russia in the Euro-Atlantic and against China in the Asia-Pacific. It is not as if the U.S. and its Western European clients are rattling sabers against China and Russia as a way to make amends and reparations for past and present acts of malice.
The dismantling of the reprehensible anti-democratic patriarchal imperialist regimes prevailing over China and Russia will not result in the dismantling of the global apartheid regime that is being maintained, advanced and overseen by the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal American empire. Nor will it put a stop to the planetary ecocide that is being driven by wealthy North American, Western European, and East Asian corporations and consumers. Everyone struggling against global apartheid and planetary ecocide today knows that the most reprehensible of villains today are U.S. militarists and the global military-industrial-academic complexes that both feed and feast on U.S. militarism. For us, it is imperative that we always condemn the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal American empire in the same breath that we condemn the anti-democratic patriarchal imperialist regimes prevailing over China and Russia. Ay, and, for us, those who make a spectacle of self-righteously condemning Chinese and Russian imperialism without condemning U.S. imperialism in the same breath are complicit in the maintenance and advancement of global apartheid and planetary ecocide.
