Paul Craig Roberts: Can The World Survive Washington’s Hubris?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31726.htm

*Can The World Survive Washington’s Hubris?*

***For a country incapable of occupying Iraq after 8 years and incapable of
occupying Afghanistan after 11 years, to simultaneously take on two nuclear
powers is an act of insanity. The hubris in Washington, fed daily by the
crazed neocons, despite extraordinary failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, has
now targeted formidable powers--Russia and China.
*

*By Paul Craig Roberts*

June 29, 2012 "Information Clearing
House<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/>"
-- When President Reagan nominated me as Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury for Economic Policy, he told me that we had to restore the US
economy, to rescue it from stagflation, in order to bring the full weight
of a powerful economy to bear on the Soviet leadership, in order to
convince them to negotiate the end of the cold war. Reagan said that there
was no reason to live any longer under the threat of nuclear war.

The Reagan administration achieved both goals, only to see these
accomplishments discarded by successor administrations. It was Reagan’s own
vice president and successor, George Herbert Walker Bush, who first
violated the Reagan-Gorbachev understandings by incorporating former
constituent parts of the Soviet Empire into NATO and taking Western
military bases to the Russian frontier.

The process of surrounding Russia with military bases continued unabated
through successor US administrations with various “color revolutions”
financed by the US National Endowment for Democracy, regarded by many as a
front for the CIA. Washington even attempted to install a
Washington-controlled government in Ukraine and did succeed in this effort
in former Soviet Georgia, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin.

The President of Georgia, a country located between the Black Sea and the
Caspian Sea, is a Washington puppet. Recently, he announced that former
Soviet Georgia is on schedule to become a NATO member in 2014.

Those old enough to remember know that NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, was an alliance between Western Europe and the US against the
threat of the Red Army overrunning Western Europe. The North Atlantic is a
long, long ways from the Black and Caspian Seas. What is the purpose of
Georgia being a NATO member except to give Washington a military base on
the Russian underbelly?

The evidence is simply overwhelming that Washington--both parties--have
Russia and China targeted. Whether the purpose is to destroy both countries
or merely to render them unable to oppose Washington’s world hegemony is
unclear at this time. Regardless of the purpose, nuclear war is the likely
outcome.

The presstitute American press pretends that an evil Syrian government is
murdering innocent citizens who only want democracy and that if the UN
won’t intervene militarily, the US must in order to save human rights.
Russia and China are vilified by US functionaries for opposing any pretext
for a NATO invasion of Syria.

The facts, of course, are different from those presented by the presstitute
American media and members of the US government. The Syrian “rebels” are
well armed with military weapons. The “rebels” are battling the Syrian
army. The rebels massacre civilians and report to their media whores in the
West that the deed was done by the Syrian government, and the Western
presstitutes spread the propaganda.

Someone is arming the “rebels” as obviously the weapons can’t be purchased
in local Syrian markets. Most intelligent people believe the weapons are
coming from the US or from US surrogates.

So, Washington has started a civil war in Syria, as it did in Libya, but
this time the gullible Russians and Chinese have caught on and have refused
to permit a UN resolution like the one the West exploited against Gaddafi.

To get around this roadblock, fish out an ancient Phantom fighter jet from
the 1960s Vietnam war era and have Turkey fly it into Syria. The Syrians
will shoot it down, and then Turkey can appeal to its NATO allies to come
to its aid against Syria. Denied the UN option, Washington can invoke its
obligation under the NATO treaty, and go to war in defense of a NATO member
against a demonized Syria.

The neoconservative lie behind Washington’s wars of hegemony is that the US
is bringing democracy to the invaded and bombed countries. To paraphrase
Mao, “democracy comes out of the barrel of a gun.” However, the Arab Spring
has come up short on democracy, as have Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries
“liberated” by US democratic invasions.

What the US is bringing is civil wars and the breakup of countries, as
President Bill Clinton’s regime achieved in former Yugoslavia. The more
countries can be torn into pieces and dissolved into rival factions, the
more powerful is Washington.

Russia’s Putin understands that Russia itself is threatened not only by
Washington’s funding of the “Russian opposition,” but also by the strife
among Muslims unleashed by Washington’s wars against secular Muslim states,
such as Iraq and Syria. This discord spreads into Russia itself and
presents Russia with problems such as Chechen terrorism.

When a secular state is overthrown, the Islamist factions become free to be
at one another’s throats. The internal strife renders the countries
impotent. As I wrote previously, the West always prevails in the Middle
East because the Islamist factions hate one another more than they hate
their Western conquerors. Thus, when Washington destroys secular,
non-Islamist governments as in Iraq and now targeted in Syria, the
Islamists emerge and battle one another for supremacy. This suits
Washington and Israel as these states cease to be coherent opponents.

Russia is vulnerable, because Putin is demonized by Washington and the US
media and because Putin’s Russian opposition is financed by Washington and
serves US, not Russian, interests. The turmoil that Washington is
unleashing in Muslim states leaks back to Russia’s Muslim populations.

It has proved to be more difficult for Washington to interfere in China’s
internal affairs, although discord has been sowed in some provinces.
Several years from now, the Chinese economy is expected to exceed in size
the US economy, with an Asian power displacing a Western one as the world’s
most powerful economy.

Washington is deeply disturbed by this prospect. In the thrall and under
the control of Wall Street and other special interest business groups,
Washington is unable to rescue the US economy from its decline. The
short-run gambling profits of Wall Street, the war profits of the
military/security complex, and the profits from offshoring the production
of goods and services for US markets have far more representation in
Washington than the wellbeing of US citizens. As the US economy sinks, the
Chinese economy rises.

Washington’s response is to militarize the Pacific. The US Secretary of
State has declared the South China Sea to be an area of American national
interest. The US is wooing the Philippine government, playing the China
threat card, and working on getting the US Navy invited back to its former
base at Subic Bay. Recently there were joint US/Philippines military/naval
exercises against the “China threat.”

The US Navy is reallocating fleets to the Pacific Ocean and constructing a
new naval base on a South Korean island. US Marines are now based in
Australia and are being reallocated from Japan to other Asian countries.
The Chinese are not stupid. They understand that Washington is attempting
to corral China.

For a country incapable of occupying Iraq after 8 years and incapable of
occupying Afghanistan after 11 years, to simultaneously take on two nuclear
powers is an act of insanity. The hubris in Washington, fed daily by the
crazed neocons, despite extraordinary failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, has
now targeted formidable powers--Russia and China. The world has never in
its entire history witnessed such idiocy.

The psychopaths, sociopaths, and morons who prevail in Washington are
leading the world to destruction.

The criminally insane government in Washington, regardless whether Democrat
or Republican, regardless of the outcome of the next election, is the
greatest threat to life on earth that has ever existed.

Moreover, the only financing the Washington criminals have is the printing
press. In a subsequent column I will examine whether the US economy will
complete its collapse before the war criminals in Washington can destroy
the world.

*Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic
Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist
for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He
has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a
worldwide following.*
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