Minority Rule

Posted on December 11, 2024 by thezman

108

While most see the collapse of Syria as just another Middle East country thrown into chaos by the American government, it is a good lesson in the dangers that come when a distinct minority rules over the majority. The ISIS rebels get the credit, but the real blame lies with the way in which the Syria state was structured. Until now, Syria was ruled by one of the many minorities in the region. That minority is a mysterious ethnoreligious group called the Alawites.

The place to start is with the people. Syria has some of the oldest communities in the world, dating back to the ancient world. Maaloula, a village in western Syria, is one of the last remaining places where Aramaic is spoken. There are Christian communities that date back to Rome. Of course, Islam has been in the area now called Syria since the time of Mohamed. There is also the ethnoreligious group called the Alawites, which split from Shia Islam at some unknown point in the past.

The origins and identity of the Alawites are a mystery. There are roughly four million of them in the region. Their legends say they are descendants of the followers of the eleventh Imam, Hasan al-Askari. The reason he is called the eleventh Iman is because he was one of the twelve imams who claimed to be the spiritual and biological successors of the Mohamed. These are the founders of Shia Islam. Exactly how they became this distinct subgroup within Islam remains a mystery.

Now, Shia Islam is itself a minority within Islam. Roughly ten percent of all Muslim belong to a sect within the Shia designation. The vast majority of Muslims, especially in the Arab world, are Sunnis. Unsurprisingly, the relations between the Sunnis and Shia have never been good. One result of this enmity between the two camps is that the Sunnis, who make up seventy percent of Syria, claim the Alawites are not just heretics and non-believers, but not even Arabs.

That last claim is not without some merit. There has been a great deal of effort to gloss over the ethnic realities in that part of the world. Western experts are sure that there is no such thing as biological reality, so differences in people, even genetic differences, are explained as cultural differences. The locals, however, understand that the Levant has been the land of invaders, and they left behind more than just their buildings and some of their cultural practices.

That aside, the Alawites have been a highly clannish and resourceful group, often creating problems for the local rulers. The Ottomans tried to suppress them on multiple occasions, but also found them useful in roles requiring skill, like tax farming and managing the empire’s finances. When the Europeans came to dominate the region in the 19th century, the Alawites proved useful to their new rulers. It turns out that every ruler needs smart and clever people.

It is this ability to run complex systems that eventually allowed the Alawites to take control of Syria. That and their clannishness. Under the French, the Alawites played a key role, which gave them access to power and resources. After independence, their resourcefulness and understanding of the systems left by the Europeans allowed Hafez al-Assad and his Ba’ath Party to seize power. The Alawites, despite their numbers, were smarter than their rivals.

As an aside, one of the many claims about the Alawites by the Muslim majority is that they supported Israeli independence and had a long working relationship with the Jews in the region. This is generally considered a smear, but it is clear that the Alawites were willing to work with other minority groups in the region. The Assad family famously protected the Christian communities in Syria, for example. Minorities have a funny habit of sticking together against the majority.

That aside, a country run by a distinct and distrusted minority is never going to be stable, especially when the minority is tiny. This is why the Assad government had been ruthless at times when dealing with the Sunni majority. To keep the peace, the government had to make clear to anyone thinking otherwise that the government would use maximum force to maintain the peace. Minority rule is always made worse by the tactics necessary to maintain it.

Of course, the Assad led Syria had been useful to the West for a long time, so they got the support they needed to maintain themselves. Until now, it had been assumed that chaos in Syria would be bad for the region and bad for Israel. As a rule, confident countries seek stability in their diplomacy. Now that the official policy of the United States is to spread chaos around the world, Assad was an easy target for the now familiar regime change operation.

Regime change was possible in Syria because it was a minority government ruling a hostile majority. Western sanctions starved Syria of the cash it needed to bribe enough of the majority into supporting them. Turkish and American terror groups operating within Syria put constant pressure on the government. The reason Assad fell so quickly to this hodgepodge of ISIS radicals is the Alawite system collapsed. The ISIS mob was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back.

This is what makes Syria a timeless lesson. No society run by a distinct minority can be stable, as the majority will always distrust that minority. Even when minority rule results in good times, as in the case of colonial Africa, the majority will find reasons to resent that minority. In fact, the good times allows that resentment to slowly build under the surface of apparent tranquility. As soon as bad times come, the majority revolts and the laws of large numbers takes its course.

Syria is why the Israelis have no interest in ruling over Arabs. They could take control of Gaza and the West Bank, for example, but they would be viewed as a minority ruling a hostile majority, so expulsion is their preferred option. In the oldest part of the world, the people still understand the oldest lessons. One of those is that a minority ruling a majority must always be a temporary condition. In the end, numbers always matter more than even human capital. The majority wins in the end.

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Decades And Weeks

Posted on December 9, 2024 by thezman

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Note: Behind the green door I have a post about being smart, stupid and lucky, a post about the proper way to assassinate rich people on the streets on New York, and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

Lenin famously said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen” The world has just experienced, and perhaps is continuing to experience, those weeks where decades happen. There is the war in Ukraine, of course, which keeps tempting the world to the abyss, but now there is the collapse of Syria, which promises to make the Middle East more dangerous. On top of that is the political crises in South Korea, France and Romania.

The easiest to diagnose is the Ukraine crisis, which has been creeping toward a conclusion most have understood since it started. The Russian army is slowly grinding up the Ukrainian army, which is slowly retreating. Slowly has been slowly becoming quickly, leading to rumors that big changes await Kiev. Zelensky has all but volunteered to be Trump’s personal footstool to find out what, if anything, Trump plans to do about Ukraine in 2025. The answer is probably nothing.

For their part, the Russians seem to have decided that they will have to sort things out despite whoever is running American foreign policy. The thing to watch is who Tucker Carlson has on from the Trump team after he returns from Russia. There is a good chance that Tucker is operating as an unofficial go between for Trump or who Trump will trust to manage the Ukraine problem. Regardless, the end of Project Ukraine promises to be weeks where decades happen.

The problem that promises to create lots of chaos for the world is the unexpected collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. One of the things you must learn when doing business in the Arab word is that nothing is ever as it appears. That is most certainly true with the fall of Assad and his exile in Russia. While it is clear that the Turks trained and supplied the “rebel” army, made up of mercenaries from around the Muslim world, it is unlikely that they anticipated this result.

It is also certain that the United States and Israel had a hand in developing this “rebel” army and setting it on its course. Like everyone else, they appear to have been unprepared for this result. Strangely, the Russians and the Iranians seem to have anticipated this result or at least were the first to see what was happening, so maybe they had a hand in this as well. The Russians have been operating in that part of the world for generations, so they understand Arab reality.

What we know is that Syria is now “controlled” by a collection of Muslim fanatics who have little in common with one another. They lack the resources and manpower to remain in control for long, so that means the many other factions and their sponsors will be looking to either flow into the void left by Assad or carve out more space for themselves in what used to be Syria. Iran, Russia, Israel, the United States and the Gulf countries will be backing their proxies in this chaos.

As an aside, the Trump demand that the United States stay out of the Syrian crisis is only going to make things worse. One reason is we will see a flood of refugees from Syria into Europe. This will be done on purpose to draw the West into the conflict, despite what Trump says. Then you have the portion of the foreign policy blob that exists to “manage” the Middle East. There is zero chance that they stay out of of what they see as an early Christmas present.

The Arabs are not having all the fun. South Korea just had an attempted coup, which saw the current president try to arrest parliament. The parliament fought back against martial law and then the president backed down. Then parliament tried to impeach the president but could not find the votes. If you want a laugh, Costin Alamariu did a piece on the bizarre politics of Korea. If North Korea decides it is time to invade South Korea, no one should be surprised.

Europe also is experiencing weeks in decades now. The Romanians tried to have an election, and things did not turn out as expected. They carefully followed the rules of “our democracy” by banning opposition parties and making sure the media ignored anyone questioning the authority of the regime. The result was the “far-right” candidate won a big victory in the first round and was holding a massive lead heading into the second round, so the Romanians annulled the election.

The reason they annulled the election is they said there must have been Russian interference causing the unexpected result. You see the logic of “our democracy” in how Western rulers operate. “Our democracy” is a system that always confirms their righteousness and their right to rule. Any other result means someone or something has sabotaged “our democracy.” Since “our democracy” is sacred, any means necessary must be employed to defend it, even annulling elections.

There is something similar happening in France. Last summer, the French populist party scored a stunning win in the first round of legislative elections. This is the party led by the Le Pen family. They were poised to win a majority in the national Assembly until Macron conspired with the other parties to rig enough seats to prevent it. Then Macron finked on his partners and appointed a prime minister none of his partners liked, which has now led to the collapse of the government.

Convention says that when the government is paralyzed this way, there are new elections to break the deadlock. The only way this can happen is for Macron to resign, which he is not going to do, because Notre démocratie est trop importante pour la laisser aux mains des électeurs. This means France is currently without a government, other than Macron playing the organ grinder’s monkey to Trump. French bonds are now less attractive to investors than Greek bonds.

The political chao in France is a foreshadowing of what lies ahead for all the EU countries as the bill for Project Ukraine comes due. Germany is headed for elections in 2025, and they are desperately trying to avoid a Romanian result, so they will probably jail anyone who could be a problem. Britain is now ruled by a party that is slightly less popular than rectal cancer. The opposition party, the Tories, is led by a clown they imported from Nigeria.

Overall, the European economy is in serious trouble. It is a thing that Western media ignores, for the most part, but anyone doing business in Europe or with companies having exposure to Europe understands. It turns out that an economy built on cheap energy from Russia performs poorly when that cheap energy from Russia is replaced by expensive energy from America and even more expensive energy from Russia, sold through Asian intermediaries.

What all of this points to as we close out the year is that what lies ahead is a time when decades happen in weeks. The looming chaos that is the next Trump administration only adds to the uncertainty. Through no fault of his own, Trump will inherit an empire surrounded by chaos of its making but lacking the human capital to understand the problems and set them right. Instead, it will be old solutions to the new problems, meaning this may seem like a calm time by comparison.

A Ship Without A Crew

Posted on November 26, 2024 by thezman

It appears the plan is to fill the time between now and when Donald Trump regains the White House with stories about starting a nuclear war with Russia. First, we got the NATO missiles strikes on Russia, then it was the Russian use of a mystery weapon that should terrify everyone. Instead, the response from NATO is a series of stories about doing even dumber things than the missile strikes. It is as if Western leaders are in a contest to see who can think of the dumbest idea possible.

So far this week we have stories leaking out from Europe that the Brits and French are talking about sending an “expeditionary force” to Ukraine. That was followed by comments from the head of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, suggesting NATO launch preemptive strikes on Russia. All of this is taking place in the looming shadow of a second Trump administration. The Europeans are carrying on as if Godzilla is approaching the continent.

Of course, all these ideas are being floated by people who would urinate themselves if faced with a physical confrontation. Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are ridiculous people who have landed in these positions due to the collapse of their respective political classes. The rest of the European political class is equally silly, but most lack the vanity of these two. Most are like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who seems to cherish being a middling mediocrity.

The question that is never asked is how did it come to this? Surely Britain has better men than Keir Starmer. The UK has a lot of problems, but it still has some of the best human capital on the planet. The same is true of France. This is a country that defined diplomacy in the West. There must be a deep well of talent in the country, despite generations of bad policy making. How in the world did these two feckless nitwits end up ruling these two once great nations?

Obviously, these two men did not arrive on the scene by chance. They were selected and groomed by the political system that rules their countries. They made the right friends, followed the right advice and most importantly, never asked the wrong questions about the current narrative. In many respects, these two men were selected purely on narrative grounds. They filled a role in the story better than the alternatives, so they got the job and here we are on the verge of war.

It is the machine that generates the narratives that makes it possible for so many mediocrities to bubble up to the surface of the system. For example, the crackpot idea of an expeditionary force was not dreamed up by Starmer or Macron. This has been floated by the best thinks tanks in the West. Here is a post from the Center for Strategic and International Studies talking up the expeditionary force. It was written by what the system calls an expert on the topic.

This idea is part of a larger narrative that assumes, like all managerial class narratives, that the world can be set right if the managerial elite simply has the will. That is the themes of this post in The Guardian by one of the UK’s top experts on the war in Ukraine and Russia in general. It is a completely insane post that has no bearing on objective reality, but that is not important. What is important is it tells guys like Starmer that the good guys have the will to make the narrative real.

That post is not written by the typical kook that fills the pages of The Guardian, but by a fellow calling himself James Nixey. He leads the Russia-Eurasia program at Chatham House, which is a prestigious think tank in the UK. In other words, he is a guy people like Starmer will call for advice on Russia. Note that Mr. Nixey is barely qualified to offer tour advice on Russia. His entire life has been about sitting in a room somewhere imagining what life is like outside that room.

This is a recurring theme in Western politics. From top to bottom it is people who are very good at playing along inside imagination land and even better at avoiding anything that resembles real life experience. Generations ago, the Prime Minister would have served in the military and maybe even seen war. Even the more effete politicians could rely on a class of men who understood how the world actually worked. Today such men are treated as skunks at a picnic.

In the fullness of time, the defining characteristic of managerialism will be its boiling off of the capable, independent men in favor or complaint mediocrities. Lacking genuine men of action, the compliant mediocrities search for consensus, which becomes their authority figure and their moral authority. It is why everything that comes from the think tanks and media reinforces the agreed upon positions. The most terrifying thing for a mediocre man is to stand alone against the consensus.

The narratives we keep seeing serve to make manifest the consensus and cast those within the consensus as the white hat in the drama. Much of what seems to drive these mediocre men of late-stage managerialism is moral affirmation. It is why they have all herded themselves off the Ukraine cliff. They care only for being seen at the sincerest believer in the prevailing narrative. For the political class, it means public policy is always a public act of piety.

If the crew of a ship all die at once, the ship does not immediately capsize. It will float around until it runs aground or succumbs to a big wave. On rare occasions it makes its way to land in one piece. That is the West right now. It is a ship bobbing around, crewed by mediocre men who are terrified at the thought of being in charge. Instead, they huddle together inside a consensus and ruthlessly enforce it. To continue the metaphor, they are below decks debating the need for a captain.

Two Minutes To Midnight

Posted on November 25, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door I have a post about my various handyman-DIY projects, a post about magnificent short film about Star Trek called Unification and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

Last week, NATO began firing long range missiles into Russia and in response the Russians fired something entirely new at Ukraine. There is not much data on what it was and what it did, but the Russians claim it was their Oreshnik system, which is a type of intermediate-range missile. The Ukrainians, of course, claim it never happened and Western media is saying it was a ballistic missile. Whatever it was is serious enough to warrant an emergency NATO meeting this week.

From independent sources, the most likely answer is that the Russians demonstrated the first combat use of a hypersonic glide vehicle in this attack. The word “hypersonic” gets tossed around quite about by online “geopolitical analysts” because it is a cool sounding word that is often used in video games. There is nothing all that new about hypersonic missiles, as many long-range ballistic missiles reach or exceed Mach 5 as they descend toward their target.

In fact, there is nothing new about hypersonic glide vehicles. The Russians started working on this technology in the 1960’s. America also had a program testing this technology for weapons. Both sides of the Cold War figured out that traditional ballistic missiles were good enough for the job of terrifying the other side with the prospect of nuclear annihilation, so the technology never went into use. The cost of hypersonic vehicles was simply too high for the task.

There was another problem with hypersonic glide vehicles. Traveling through the atmosphere at those speeds made them impossible to hide. Satellites would be able to track them as soon as they were launched and ground radar would then also be able to track them, even if they have some maneuverability. A pretty good rule of air defense is that if it can be tracked it can be killed. At the minimum, the other side sees it coming and has time to get its own missiles in the air.

That is a bit of the arms race that has been forgotten. It was not just the race to have the most devastating warheads, but also a race to have the best detection systems and the best cloaking system. If the other side could not anticipate your launch or see it coming right away, you had an obvious advantage. This is why both sides eventually banned intermediate range missiles in Europe in 1987. The United States unilaterally withdrew from the treaty in 2019.

The intermediate range missile presents a big problem if your goal is to avoid wiping out mankind in a nuclear war. Because it can hit its target in less than thirty minutes, there is no way to respond, short of mag-dumping your ICBM’s. By the time the launch is detected, the missiles are closing in on the target. Missile defense in the nuclear scenario depends on hitting them in their boost phase or as they leave the atmosphere to prevent them from exploding over your territory.

It is unclear when the Russians resumed their intermediate missile program, but it was probably not long after the U.S. withdrew from the treaty. It is not all that clear when the Russians resumed working on hypersonic glide vehicles either. There is growing evidence that they have been collaborating with the Chinese on this project, because last year the Chinese demonstrated a hypersonic weapon. It combined a hypersonic glide vehicle and a fractional orbital bombardment system.

That last bit is another clue that the Chinese have been working with the Russians on this project, as the fractional orbital bombardment system is technology that dates to the Soviet Union. The Russians first developed this technology in the 1960s for its nuclear program. Unlike a ballistic missile, the FOBS only reaches low-earth orbit and can then deorbit over the target. This makes it very hard to track, because the warhead does not follow a predictable path.

When the Chinese demonstrated the combined use of FOBS and hypersonic glide vehicles, American military planners had a panic attack. General Milley famously compared it to Sputnik, by which he meant a moment when the West suddenly realized it had fallen behind the Soviets in space technology. Everyone dismissed his comments, because he is a notorious liar, but he may have been right. The possible use of this type of weapon by the Russians likely proves it.

The Russians have not said much about this system, other than stating that the West has no defense against it. The usual suspects are claiming that it is just an old intermediate missile system, and the Ukrainians say it was an ICBM. What we know is that minutes after it was launched, multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles slammed into targets in Ukraine at speeds above Mach 5. Some claim Mach 10, but that is probably an exaggeration, but Mach 5 is still very fast.

What this means is that the Russians, if sufficiently provoked, could remove any European city from the game board in a matter of minutes. There is no defense and not much of a warning to the target country. If France, for example, starts firing SCALP missiles into Russia, Paris could cease to exist within a few minutes of someone telling Macron that he better say his prayers. It is easy to see why the deployment of such a weapon is so terrifying to fans of human civilization.

Of course, it is why the treaty banning the development of such weapons was viewed as an important step in deescalating the Cold War. This technology puts the world on a hair trigger with no time to pause for communication with the other side. It is also why the neocons desperately wanted the U.S. to withdraw from the deal. John Bolton was instrumental is convincing American officials to pull out of the treaty. In 2018, politicians still thought listening to psychopaths was a good idea.

The path to this point is a familiar one. The neocons first invent a threat, in this case the threat was that China and Iran were developing intermediate range weapons. There was little evidence of this, but that never matters. This is then turned into a justification for the United States to do something stupid. Famously, the invasion of Iraq was based on the entirely false assertion that Iraq was building doomsday weapons. It turned out that they only had WW1 vintage chemical weapons.

For the next two months, the psychopaths are still in charge of Ukraine policy, so they will no doubt keep poking the bear. It is pretty clear they want the Russians to use nukes in Ukraine. They have been yapping about it since 2022. That means the NATO meeting this week will be about getting the Germans to start launching their Taurus missiles at Russia. The excuse will be that they need to call the Russian bluff, but the real reason is they want a reason to fire the nukes themselves.

It remains to be seen if Trump is up for the difficult task of deescalating the arms race with China and Russia. He fell for every trick Washington could muster the first time, even some tricks they invented just for him. He seems to be set on keeping the neocons out of his administration this time. Even so, he will inherent a world that is now infinitely more dangerous thanks to the reckless behavior of the Biden admin. Simply surviving the next term might be the best he can do.

Trump’s Foreign Policy Problem

Posted on October 30, 2024 by thezman

One of the problems the world faces is that the dominant power on the planet has entered a period of incoherence. Joe Biden has come to symbolize the country he allegedly leads in that he is old, frail and not always understandable. This is how much of the world now sees the United States. What they see from Washington are people either trapped in a bygone era or divorced from present reality. It is as if the last several decades never happened.

You see this in this Financial Times post about what foreign policy could be like under a second Trump presidency. Keep in mind that the Financial Times is often used by the intelligence community to plant stories it wants to launder. The audience is not just the English-speaking world, but also Europe. The people quoted are all said to be associates of the Trump team. Their views may or may not reflect the thinking of Trump’s inner circle.

That aside, the first thing to note is that there is no acknowledgement of present reality in the story. For example, Congressman Michael Waltz is quoted often about how to resolve the Ukraine war. He says, “Trump could threaten to crash Russia’s economy by lowering the price of oil and gas.” According to Waltz, this will force the Russians to beg for peace negotiations. This policy makes sense if it is 1985 and Russia is still the Soviet Union with a brittle command economy.

For starters, the president cannot willy-nilly change oil prices. No amount of American production can drive down prices to a level where it would have an impact on the Russian economy. The “break even” point of Russian crude is well below that of the cheapest American production. Then you have the fact that it will take a decade to bring American crude production to the levels needed to crash prices. There is also the fact that Biden emptied the strategic oil reserve.

In other words, the big idea from the foreign policy experts is something they read about from the Reagan years that has no chance of working now. It is as if they are unaware of the sanctions war they launched two years ago that not only failed to crater the Russian economy but boomeranged back on them. The German economy is in in free fall because they no longer have access to cheap Russian gas. Meanwhile, the Russian economy is booming.

Of course, there is the fact that these people can only think in terms of threats when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world. Congressman Michael Waltz is a neocon sock puppet who was an early cheerleader for Project Ukraine. He was also wrong about every aspect of it. In any other profession, being as wrong as Mike Waltz would be disqualifying, but here he is being quoted as an authority on Russia. This is what happens when there are no consequences to failure.

Elsewhere in the article, they quote Fred Fleitz, a former John Bolton staffer and current foreign policy adviser at the America First Policy Institute, which promotes itself as helping shape Trump policy. With regards to Iran, Fleitz argues “The objective should be to bankrupt Iran again and to reinstitute maximum pressure.” Again? Has he not noticed that Iran survived sanctions for three decades? Is he not aware that Iran now has the support of China and Russia?

With regards to settling the war in the Ukraine, Fleitz says, “We freeze the conflict, Ukraine does not cede any territory, they don’t give up their territorial claims, and we have negotiations with the understanding there probably won’t be a final agreement until Putin leaves the stage.” Unlike Waltz, Fleitz has no clue as to why the Russians would entertain such a silly offer. Note that this idea was first floated by the neocons when the Ukrainian counter-offensive failed.

The jaw droppingly ignorant part of that post is the use of the term “Minsk-3” to describe the Trump strategy. The Russians correctly view the Minsk agreements as a Western ploy to buy time to arm Ukraine. The reason they think this is Angela Merkel said this in an interview last year. Naming the Trump strategy after two prior efforts to trick the Russians is just a way to make sure there can be no negotiations between the Trump people and the Russians.

This is probably why this story was planted in the Financial Times. The hope is to poison the well, so to speak, for the next administration with regards to negotiating with the Russians. They may not be able to control what Trump does, but they can give the Russians many reasons to not trust any overtures. After all, Trump will be gone in four years, so if they can freeze the Russia situation, they have a chance to get back in power and resume their efforts to start a war with Russia.

What becomes clear in that Financial Times story is that the American foreign policy establishment does not have a clue as to how to address the many problems the next president will face. The main reason for their incoherence is they seem to be unaware that these problems were caused by them. Compounding it is the toxic ideology of neoconservatism that has poisoned the foreign policy community. It is a cancer in the bowels of America’s most important institution.

It is what makes prospects for a sober minded and realistic approach to foreign policy under Trump unlikely. Trump’s instincts are good, as are those with many of the people around him, including JD Vance, but he will inherit a foreign policy establishment that is both stuck in the past and corrupted by a worldview that is inconsistent with the world as it is today and with the needs of the country. Fixing this problem without the use of extrajudicial means may not be possible.

The Kazan Catastrophe

Posted on October 24, 2024 by thezman

Back in the ancient times, if you wished to buy product from someone you arrived at their location with money, or they arrived at your location with product. The product was inspected, and the money was inspected. Once both sides were satisfied, the exchange was made, and the deal was done. It did not take long for a class of middlemen to turn up who brokered such deals. They inspected the goods, arranged transportation and safeguarded the product and the money.

World trade has not changed much since the ancient times. Middlemen still facilitate most of the trade. They are called banks, insurance companies, freight brokers, shipping companies and so forth, but they are all part of this vast and essential middleman economy that makes it possible for the local Walmart to have shelves stuffed with goods from Asia. It is what makes it possible for the Chinese company selling dog food to get paid by Walmart.

One thing to note about this setup is the two greatest seafaring nations in the history of the planet, the United States and Britain, do very little shipping. Instead, they control the flow of goods around the world through control of the insurance markets and the financial system used in global trade. If you are involved in global trade, you are certainly using the American financial system and either directly or indirectly the British maritime insurance system.

The dollar being the world’s reserve currency has been to this point the main driver of the explosion in global trade. The buyer in South America can do business with a seller in China, because his bank is connected to the American financial system through his country’s central bank. He does not have to get RMB from his bank to pay the Chinese vendors, because the exchange is done automatically through the dollar dominated global financial system.

This is about to change with the launch of an alternative payment system that was announced at the BRICS summit in Kazan Russia. The Russians and the Chinese have been working on creating an alternative to SWIFT, which stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. It is the platform that networks the world’s banks to facilitate the flow of money around the world. The new system seeks to replace SWIFT for trade among the BRICS countries.

For most people this is an eye-glazing topic, but in the fullness of time it could be an event that generations of historians study as an inflection point. What the BRICS countries are seeking to do is wrest control of the global financial system from the West, specifically the English-speaking countries, at least for the members of BRICS and those countries willing to trade with BRICS. By extension, it is an effort to reduce the power of the dollar and thus the power of the American empire.

What this new system proposes to do is make it easier for participating countries to conduct business in the currency of other participating countries. Instead of China needing dollars to buy oil from the Saudis and therefore preferring dollars from other countries for Chinese goods, the Chinese will be able to buy oil in RMB and the Saudis will be able to buy Chinese goods in whatever currency they possess. The new system would handle the conversion and exchange rates instantly.

As an aside, that last part is interesting. In the United States, a business does not get paid by the credit card company for a few days. Often, the delay is longer. Of course, there are fees for taking credit card payments. In Russia and China, the movement of money is instant. The system is treated as a public utility, so fees are relatively small compared to what we see in the West. This is owing to much better and newer technology and a different attitude toward banking.

That aside, the significance of this proposal is enormous. The BRICS countries represent half the world’s population. The Arab oil countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, are onboard for this new system. The Saudis let expire the fifty-year-old deal with Washington that established the petrodollar. China, India and Russia are the driving force behind this new arrangement and represent three of the most important economic powerhouses in the world at the moment.

What this means for the West is far less influence over the rest of the world through the control of the financial system. The main reason China, Russia and India have pushed for this new system is they have grown weary of Washington abusing its position to bully the rest of the world. The sanctions war unleashed by Washington against Russia in 2022 was the final straw. If Washington would use the dollar to try regime change in Russia, it would do it to anyone, especially China.

What the BRICS summit in Kazan represents is decades of belligerently incompetent foreign policy in Washington. Ten years ago, it was inconceivable that these important countries would come together to create a parallel financial system, as all of them were committed to the dollar and the Western system. They were committed to the “rules-based order” because they assumed it served their interests, but decades of abuse by Washington has convinced them otherwise.

What this means for the West is clear. What we see forming up is a trading and cooperation block that includes all the countries outside the West, representing the bulk of the world’s population and the majority of economic activity. Add in the fact that the West has let its manufacturing base shrivel and seems to be at war with its agricultural base and you can see the problem. Economies based in providing services tied to the financial system are facing a cliff now.

For the United States, this could not come at a worse time. Debt is already at staggering levels and is accelerating. The productive and innovative portion of the population is aging, while the unproductive portion is exploding. Add in decades of infrastructure neglect, the demographic and cultural catastrophes, and now is not a good time for a decline in the dollar. America is an empire that debased its currency via the perfidious subversion of its own rules.

Contrary to some claims, the dollar is not about to collapse, but what Kazan signals is the steady decline in the dollar. As the rest of the world begins to trade outside the dollar, it means dollars and instruments denominated in dollars, like debt, will lose value on the global market. This means the American banking system must slow the creation of dollars to prevent inflation. This means the cost of borrowing dollars must go up and stay up in anticipation of declining dollar demand

The steady decline of the dollar means a steady decline in the American standard of living, baring a revolution in Washington. Being the world’s mint and banker only works if the world accepts what you are minting. A rentier economy reliant on skimming from every transaction is only possible if you control the currency. The parasitism that has become a feature of our economy is going to become more obvious. That will bring political consequences as well.

American Trotskyites

Posted on October 21, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door I have a post about the collapse of the entertainment industry, a post about the end of The Grand Tour and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

One of the most remarkable, but woefully unremarked, developments of the last decade is the shift of the neocons back to the left. Starting with Trump coming down the escalator in 2015, the neocons first tried to purge him and his supporters like they did to Pat Buchanan and the paleos in the 1990’s. When that failed, they began their slow march out of the conservative movement then out of the Republican Party, returning to their old home on what we call the left.

Perhaps it is the timescale, but this is not something that has gotten a lot of attention, despite the centrality of the neocons to conservatism. There are prominent neocons at all the major media nodes, where they have spent the last decade railing about Donald Trump on a daily basis. For those familiar with the history of neoconservatism and their wars with the people we call paleos, this transition is like getting confirmation of a long-dismissed conspiracy theory.

Imagine if twenty years from now a collection of retired government officials steps forward and to say that 9/11 was an inside job. The planes were real, but the whole thing was orchestrated by the CIA or maybe the Mossad. It is not just that it would reveal a conspiracy to conceal the truth, but that it would validate the people tarred as conspiracy theories for doubting the official truth. It would be the sort of revelation that leads to questioning other official truths.

That is how this post about Bill Kristol and Eliot Cohen should be viewed. Way back when a group of Jewish intellectuals broke with the left in the middle of the last century and started their march into Buckley conservatism, there was a debate about what they were really doing. Was it a way to subvert the Buckley movement? Were these people genuinely changing their ideological orientation or were they simply opportunists seeing conservatism as a more useful vehicle for their project?

Long forgotten is the fact that the label “neoconservative” was a smear coined by a socialist named Michael Harrington. These newly minted conservatives were often called Trotskyites because they never abandoned their old ideology, but simply opposed the people who came to dominate the American left. Of course, others accused them of being a stalking horse for Zionism and the Israel lobby. Still others suspected that their obsession with Russia was the real motivation.

In other words, from the very start no one trusted their sincerity with regards to their conversion to the conservative cause. They brought lots of money and organizational might, so the Buckley crowd overlooked these concerns and welcomed them into the movement over many objections. Before long, the neocons organized the purge of their doubters and enemies in the movement. Half a century or so since this started, the skeptics of these people have been vindicated.

Buried in that post about Kristol and Cohen is an easily overlooked assertion that has always been at the heart of the issue. They claim that conservative Jews have specific interests that they think are better served by the Democrats now. Leaving aside their definition of “conservative Jews”, what they are arguing is that this subgroup of Americans has interests peculiar to themselves that can conflict with the majority interests of the country, but those minority interests come first.

This gets to something further down the memory hole than the old neocon – paleocon battles of the last century. Jewish liberals and leftists have often accused neocons and Zionists of being bad for the Jews, because they confirm the claims often made by Jewish opponents regarding the loyalty of Jews. Bill Kristol makes explicit that his primary interests lie outside of and often in opposition to the interest of the American people, so you can see the problem.

A lot of people accused of being conspiracy theorists with regards to the behavior of the neocons have been vindicated over the last decade. This gets little to no attention in the mainstream media because the neocons still wield enormous power. They have always deftly folded their interests into those of the Israel lobby and no one in politics dares take on those guys. For elected officials, opposing Israel means losing the next election and for the chattering classes, it means exile.

Another aspect of this is the ease with which the neocons have made the transition from conservative and Republican to progressive and Democrat. Disgraced in the Bush years, they nevertheless hung on in the Obama years, orchestrating various schemes like the 2014 coup in Ukraine. They have had total control of the Biden administration to the point where its sole purpose was war with Russia. At no point in this transition was there a hint of dissent or self-examination.

The other side of this is the fact that the Democratic Party has put up no resistance to the return of their old Trotskyites comrades. The same people who were marching around in the streets, banging their pots and pans over the Bush wars in the Middle East now wear Ukraine lapel pins. Without a trace of irony, they accuse Trump fans of disloyalty for not supporting the Ukraine war or the Israel wars. There is a last scenes in Animal Farm quality to all of it.

Of course, this raises the oldest critique of America’s two-party political system, that it is just a show put on for the masses. The real decisions are made outside of public view by the powerful interests who control the system. One of those powerful groups are the neocons, who work with the Israel lobby to control foreign policy. Given what we have witnessed over the last decade, that old critique is vindicated. The people in charge are immune the ballot box and operate as an alien overclass.

Washington Was Right

Posted on October 14, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door I have a post about the death of grammar, a post about life as a modern serf and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

George Washington famously observed, “The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.” This was in his farewell address where he cautioned that one of the risks to the new nation was from involvement in foreign affairs. When a country aligns with another country, it not only takes on the friends and enemies of that country, it opens the door for that country to influence its leaders and shape its policy.

We see this writ large with Israel. Since the Bush II administration, Israel has been seeking a way to get the United States to go to war with Iran. They claim Iran is the cause of all the problems in the region. Coincidentally, Iran also backs the two primary opponents of the Greater Israel project, Syria and Hezbollah. Therefore, if the United States takes out Iran, then peace will descend on the region and, coincidentally, Israel will face no opposition to its expansion plans.

Bush II probably would have pulled the trigger on a war with Iran if the Iraq war had not been such a debacle. The neocons were boasting in the first term that once Iraq was made into a democracy, it would help “liberate” Iran from its rulers. These plans we shelved once Obama came to power, in part because of Valerie Jarrett, who was in favor of normalizing relations with Iran. The neocons were also busy getting Project Ukraine off the ground.

Depending upon whose narrative you prefer, the United States is either abandoning Project Ukraine in order to deal with the Middle East or the United States is getting sucked into a war with Iran and must abandon Project Ukraine. Either way, it is becoming clear that war with Iran is in the cards. The Israelis keep provoking the Iranians, who have no choice but to respond. The Israelis then claim the response is an unjustified attack so they must respond.

The last turn at this game was a genuine escalation as the Iranians launched waves of ballistic missiles that were able to penetrate Israeli air defenses. This by itself is a huge step in the process. No one thought the Iranians had this ability. Add in the accuracy with which they were able to target Israeli military facilities and the Israel – Iran conflict moved much closer to all-out war. Israel promised massive attacks against Iranian nuclear and energy facilities.

Now we get word that the United States is setting up the THAAD anti-ballistic missile system in Israel. This is the most advanced air defense system in the American arsenal and it is supposed to be capable of defeating the best missiles. Of course, the Iron Dome was supposed to be the best air defense system until it was defeated. The Patriot system was also supposed to be a great system until it was destroyed by the Russians in Ukraine as soon as it was deployed.

Reportedly, the Biden administration opposes attacks on Iranian nuclear and energy facilities, but that could be a cover story. They reportedly promised Iran that Israel would not retaliate to the Iranian drone attack. Then Israel set off a string of targeted assassinations and the famous pager attack. It is a good reminder that everyone involved in Middle East politics is incapable of honesty. Everyone lies about everything to everyone, even about the lies they are telling.

Regardless of intentions, this move now provides Israel with cover for whatever attacks they have planned. This will inevitably mean Iran launches another wave of missiles at Israel, maybe even targeting that THAAD system. This is what happened with the Patriot system in Ukraine. The Russians filled the sky with drones, so when the Patriot system lit up, it became an easy target for Russian missiles. The use of air defense systems makes them vulnerable to attack.

Even if the Iranians avoid striking this system, they have a lot of missiles and the THAAD system is limited. Each battery is about forty interceptors. Iran reportedly has thousands of missiles. Of course, like everything to do with the Military Industrial Complex, the THAAD system is riddled with corruption. It is a big, complicated and expensive system no one expected to use in war, so it is mostly a jobs and patronage program, rather than a weapon of war.

All that aside, it is easy to see that George Washington was correct. Indulging habitual fondness for Israel has made the world’s lone superpower a slave to whatever schemes the Israelis are plotting. The United States is on the brink of war with Iran, solely because Israel desires it. No one in Washington dares question any of this, as the Israeli lobby is too powerful. Even the neocons, who prefer Project Ukraine over Project Iran, are powerless against the Israel lobby.

War with Iran will be a disaster of the United States. The American military can deliver devastating strikes against Iran, but Iran can also close the Strait of Hormuz, sending global oil prices through the roof. They could also attack oil facilities in the region, crippling global supplies and sending the world into a depression. Only a madman would want such a scenario, but this is the price that must be paid when you chain yourself to the lunatic regime that is Israel.

Compounding things is the fact that no one knows who is actually running foreign policy in the Biden administration. We know it is not Biden, due to his declining health, but who is calling the shots is a mystery. It is no doubt a mystery to Iran, as well. The Russians have made this point regarding the Ukraine war. The result is the United States is the Lennie Small to the Israeli George Milton as far the Iranians are concerned, which means the United States no longer has agency.

This is exactly what Washington warned of in his farewell address. The only way out of this degenerate relationship with Israel is a revolution in how Washington deals with the entire region and that is impossible due to the massive Israel lobby. When every Congressman has a minder from Israel and every media outlet has to run their coy past AIPAC and the ADL, there is no room to think about this clearly, much less have a debate about this terrible situation.

This is why the way to bet is war with Iran after the November election. The Biden people have no reason to care at that point and Israel will see it as an opportunity to get what they have wanted for decades. The next administration will have to pay the price for this reckless foreign entanglement. Perhaps it is the price that must be paid for the end of empire. Gas lines and ten-dollar gasoline will surely cause some to question this habitual fondness for Israel, at least.

The Smash And Grab Ends

Posted on October 9, 2024 by thezman

This weekend, the heads of the NATO families were supposed to meet to discuss the “victory plan” for Ukraine created by Volodymyr Zelensky, but the meeting has been cancelled, allegedly due to the weather. Joe Biden was supposed to attend but dropped out on Tuesday due to hurricane Milton. The peace summit Zelensky was planning was also cancelled. When Zelensky was in Washington last month he was given millions to hold a second peace conference.

One thing that was supposed to be discussed at this meeting was a plan that has been in the works for eighteen months according to the Financial Times. This story covers the basics of the new plan for victory. Russia would be handed a deal whereby they get to hold the lands they have, Ukraine joins NATO, but promises to not start a war to reclaim those lands and at some point in the future, Russia will give back those lands to Ukraine for reasons no one can explain.

The scheme is ridiculous, which is probably why the intel service planted the story in the Financial Times this week. This has become a habit of the Anglo intelligence services over the last year. When they want something injected into the political discussion regarding Ukraine or they want to elicit a Russian reaction to something discussed behind closed doors, they plant a story in the Financial Times. Presumably, this story was placed there ahead of the meeting for some reason.

Officially, the main focus of the meeting was supposed to be the Zelensky plan for peace, which has two main parts. One is Ukraine joins NATO right now and Russia agrees to return all lands claimed by Ukraine. That is pretty much it. The path to victory is the United States threatens Moscow with nuclear war unless the Russians withdraw all of their forces from Ukraine, including Crimea. The reason to cancel the meeting is there is nothing really to discuss. The plan is nonsense.

That may be the reason why Zelensky created the plan and spent the last month shopping it around the West. The one thing Zelensky cannot survive right now is a peace process involving the Russians. The reason for that is the ultranationalists in Kiev and on the front are strong enough to oppose it. They can use the process as an excuse to take out Zelensky. On the other hand, Zelensky cannot simply flee with his billion dollars, as the West will not protect him.

He is in a political vice. One jaw is the nationalist forces that have been committed to war with Russian since the Maiden coup in 2014. Despite the losses on the battlefield, they remain committed to the war. They have no choice from their perspective, as a Russian condition for peace talks is dissolution of the nationalists. Given the Russian habits and recent history, the leaders of these nationalists forces are right to assume dissolution means they end up dead.

The other jaw is the West, which has committed itself to the war against Russia, but is unwilling to go all in fearing the consequences. The truth is escalatory dominance only works if the other side believes you can continue to escalate. The Russians know the West is not willing to go all in for Ukraine. The West is now in a trap they created for themselves in 2022 and 2023 with all the hot rhetoric. They need a way out, but they cannot simply quit, so they need Zelensky to make a deal.

For his part, Zelensky has been a rapacious schemer who has survived far longer than anyone expected. He does not get credit for managing to stay alive while existing in this impossible position. He must wage a war enthusiastically that he knows cannot be won, but also keep the various factions from pointing the finger at him for the failure to find a miracle solution to the battlefield reality. So far, he has outmaneuvered all of his opponents in Kiev, which is miraculous.

It looks like the Zelensky victory plan is actually a survival plan. The game is to buy time so that the nationalist units on the front get worn down or destroyed, thus weakening their political support in Kiev. As the saying goes, political power comes from the barrel of a gun. If there is going to be a move against Zelensky, it will include nationalist military units. If those units are buried under rubble in the Donbas, then they will not be around to depose Zelensky.

For their part, the nationalist units seem to get this, as they have repeatedly refused orders to engage with the Russians in difficult battles. Despite having the best equipment and the best men, they have been held in reserve for most of the war, most likely for political reasons. That cannot go on much longer, given the condition of the front, so time is probably on Zelensky’s side. At some point, the nationalists either die on the front or quit on the war.

Of course, all of this assumes the Russians will be willing to deal with Zelensky when the time comes. It also assumes the West will not kill him as an excuse to wash their hands of the project. Then you have the nationalists who may simply kill Zelensky because they can, and they have never liked him. The Zelensky survival plan assumes many things that may turn out to be unrealistic, but for now it is the only plan he has, so he is working it as hard as he can.

That may be the other reason for the cancellation of the Ramstein meeting. It may be dawning on the Western political class that there is no plan for victory because victory is impossible and Zelensky has known it for a long time. His little green man act was just part of the long con he has been running to both remain in power and get hundreds of billions in financing, some of which has underwritten his retirement. The West now needs a plan for how to not look like dupes.

In this regard, the Ukraine war is a metaphor for the West. Everything about this project has been in the short term. Everyone involved is thinking like a smash and grab gang working the shopping mall. At the macro level, it is as if the West is controlled by an alien class that is here to harvest what they can before moving on to the next opportunity to run the next grift. As with Ukraine, no one thinks about investing in the people or the long-term consequences of their actions.

Trouble On The Edge Of Empire

Posted on September 24, 2024 by thezman

In the end phase of an empire, there are two political dynamics. One is the intense, internal politics among the ruling class of the empire. These are the people fighting to hold onto the power of the empire, but also fighting with one another to maintain their slice of the shrinking pie of benefits. The other politics are on the fringe where the beginnings of alternative power centers grapple with reality and the decreasing ability of the empire to provide necessary protection.

For the American empire, one of those fringes where politics is happening as a result of the decline of the empire is Europe. The Germans, for example, have had a set of local elections that were all bad news for the provincial rulers, which in this context is the coalition government led by Olaf Scholz. The parties that make up the ruling coalition of Germany did poorly, and in the case of the Greens catastrophically bad, in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg.

Worse yet, the winner, in the public relations sense, was the hated AfD, or Alternative for Deutschland, which came in second in Saxony and Brandenburg and won for the first time in Thuringia. The AfD gaining support is a disaster all by itself, but doing so in Brandenburg is a fascinating development. This is the base for the SPD, and they needed shenanigans to prevent the AfD from winning the election. The CDU threw its support to the SPD to block the AfD.

Another bit of subtext to this is that a new party of former leftists, in the German sense of the word, has created an anti-immigration party around Sahra Wagenknecht, called the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance or BSW. They came in third place. That means two anti-immigration parties are surging. On top of that, the Green Party appears to be losing all of its support everywhere. In Brandenburg they failed to meet the minimum threshold to gain any seats in parliament.

Of course, the German political elite is not taking this well. As we see all over Europe, the parties that pretended to be ideological opponents for years have come together to thwart these outsider parties. Germany, for example, has been ruled by the “traffic light coalition”, which would be like the Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Greens forming a new coalition to fend off the Constitution Party in Congress. It gives the game away to maintain control of politics.

This is the same thing we saw in France over the summer. The anti-immigration party led by Marie Le Pen surged to the lead in the first round of elections for the National Assembly, so all of the other parties teamed up to prevent the Le Pen’s party from winning an outright majority in the second round. Of course, the parties in this grand coalition to stop mean words has immediately started to attack one another because the only thing they have in common is corruption.

As in Germany, the bit above the waterline is the immigration issue, but beneath the surface there is a bigger issue. The political elites of Europe no longer look like European political elites. Instead, they are these weird, cosmopolitan citizens of the world types whose success is pegged to their slavish loyalty to an international economic elite centered in London and New York. There is an alienation rooted in their transnational transactionalism to which the locals are reacting.

Of course, immigration is the tangible manifestation of this. Immigration only makes sense if the immigrants are a net benefit to the locals. This only works in boom times when everyone is feeling generous. It is not boom times in Europe, but the immigrants continue to pour in, which suggests there is another reason behind immigration enthusiasm among the political elites. This is where the sterile, technocratic alienness of the political class comes into play.

It is not just in the heart of the EU where this “us-versus-them” cultural dynamic is turning up in practical politics. Italy has quietly started to limit immigrants while not offending Brussels. The Italian economy relies on transfers from the rich, intelligently managed economies of the north, so the Meloni government has to tread carefully in order to avoid regime change. She has managed to remain popular, while quietly addressing the immigration issue.

At the other end of the EU, the Nordic countries are experiencing something of a revolution in thought on immigration. Denmark has been quietly hostile to immigration, but now Sweden is becoming publicly hostile to it. The Swedish government is now paying immigrants, even those with citizenship, to leave Sweden. This is an enormous change in attitude, as Sweden was the most fanatically pro-immigration country in the EU just a few years ago.

Something that may be working in the favor of nationalist parties and activists in Europe is the lunacy in the Anglosphere regarding immigration. Vulgar simpletons like Keir Starmer are a warning to the continent. Despite having support from just one of every six British voters, the Starmer government is aggressively waging war on the natives on behalf of the immigrants. What is going on in the UK and America is proof that those “far-right” parties are right about what lies behind immigration.

All of this has been helped along by the proxy-war against Russia. After the effects of the initial gaslighting wore off, Europeans started to notice that their political elites were far more enthusiastic for Ukraine than their own countries. They also noticed that their political elites were happy to sacrifice the welfare of their people for Project Ukraine in order to curry favor with Washington. The American empire was happy to inflict misery on Europe if it furthered their petty fights with Russia.

Where this has left Europe is as a collection of provinces that no longer enjoy the protection of the empire but are governed by a provincial ruling class that enjoys the financial benefits of empire. The growing awareness of this reality is causing the clodhoppers of Europe to revolt. The continent is far from breaking free from their Anglosphere masters, but the politics of Europe are opening the gates to parties and politicians who will seek liberation from empire.

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