For eons man has been predicting the end of the world…..and with the advent of social media now everyone that can type can have their say as to just when the fateful will arrive……in the last week I read at least three separate predictions…one was because of transgender stuff….the other was refugees and finally there is the one I like best…..Clinton will bring about the end of the world as we know it….
And then while surfing around news sites I found this one on Unz Review……the author is Philip Giraldi…who is a notorious skeptic of social media…..
Baiting Russia is not good policy
Last week I attended a foreign policy conference in Washington that featured a number of prominent academics and former government officials who have been highly critical of the way the Bush and Obama Administrations have interacted with the rest of the world. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago was on a panel and was asked what, in his opinion, has been the most notable foreign policy success and the most significant failure in the past twenty-five years. The success was hard to identify and there was some suggestion that it might be the balancing of relationships in strategically vital Northeast Asia, which “we have not yet screwed up.” If I had been on the panel I would have suggested the Iran nuclear agreement as a plus.
As for the leading foreign policy failure there was an easy answer, “Iraq” which was on everyone in the room’s lips, but Mearsheimer urged one not to be so hasty. In reality the Iraq disaster has killed hundreds of thousands, has cost trillions of dollars and has unleashed serious problems for the Mideast region in general while allowing the rise of ISIS, but in “realistic foreign policy terms” it has not been a catastrophic event for the United States, which had hardly been seriously injured by it apart from financially and in terms of reputation.
Source: How the World Ends – The Unz Review
I found it an interesting read…..but I would like to hear what my readers have to say about it…..
Left Forum 2016, How Universal U.S. Sovereignty Threatens World Peace
https://youtu.be/KZXKWQ7eLbI via @YouTube
Good Post…I have read similar…thanx
Sure thing
Seems to me they’re all standing in the midst of the trees, trying to find the forest, when, in reality, their danger comes from the encroachment of the desert surrounding the forest. Our species’ most pressing danger isn’t from politics, it is from our denial of the already unstoppable changes we’ve introduced into the ecosphere. None of them is even addressing the very issues which will kill us, far before we shoot enough bullets to do the job, and much more efficiently, as it will most likely get us all at once…We have no defense against major environmental catastrophes….
As usual, they’re looking in the wrong place for answers….
gigoid, the dubious’
AS always….never looking in the right places…chuq
While I disagree with (or think he overstates the importance of) a few of the specific examples, the big picture is largely correct.
America has made consistent mistakes in how it handled the former Soviet Union (and the rest of the world). America put it’s best foot forward in it’s treatment of WW2 enemy nations. However, it put it’s worse foot forward when dealing with it’s defeated Cold War enemy. It was more interested in building a lasting economic victory than building a lasting peace by rebuilding a defeated nation. Carpetbagging & corruption certainly sums it up.
When The Wall fell, my fear was that -without a worthy competitor to keep it honest- America would let the power of being the only Superpower go to its head. Without a “bad guy” to fight, America would stop being the “good guy”. Since then, America has been increasingly using it’s lone Superpower status to essentially bully everyone into submitting to their every whim. America now thinks it runs the place and can force everyone to submit. It thinks it’s the World’s Policeman who can enforce its laws & standards all over the world, while it remains immune from international laws & standards. America is drunk on its own power and that kind of thing rarely ends well.
The Russian steroid story is a good example of ego-driven, pointless, overreach. The Soviets absolutely did this for decades, but where was America then? Perhaps the problem is the government central-planning component. Perhaps Russia should have done it according to America standards. If only the Russian athletes acted as self-interested individuals and enlisted the help on the Free Market, just like American athletes do (see: Bay Area Labs). America probably would be cool with that.
Damn! I cannot disagree…..this country has been a bully for decades now.
Well said. A Army with no war to fight is a dangerous thing. As you said that never really ends well. The more one looks at it the more scary it act get. We have often said America needs conflict to survive and remain unified as a nation. Talk is cheap the reality is not pretty. Great comment. Dan