Found on the Net:
The US maximum pressure campaign on Iran’s real success seems to be further dividing the world economy into a US Empire vs a Sino-Russo coalition. I suspect Trump was sold on this idea by Steve Bannon, as a way of cutting Chinese manufacturers out of the US economy so the US can rebuild it’s industrial base while putting the screws to the US vassals in South American and Europe. However, the flaw in Bannon’s thinking is the following:
1) US capitalism is now parasitic, not productive; it is aimed at financializing transactions and existing products, not investing in new material production. Cut off from cheap Russian & Chinese raw materials and labor, Western parasitic capitalists will simply move their exploitative interests to Pro-US puppets, thereby denying the US the promised resurgent production.
2) European vassalage to the US Empire is based on the promise of a high standard of living and a US-funded security architecture, severing European access to both cheap Russian & Iranian oil/gas and low cost Chinese production, while forcing them to pay higher security/NATO costs and subjecting them to constant refugee influx from US wars in the Middle East and Africa. This is not really a good arrangement from the point of view of the European vassals, let’s face it. This will trigger a political crisis in the European states. It will also eventually lead to a harsh anti-American response among the populations of the vassals, as it will be impossible to conceal the obvious negative effects of the US actions on their nations.
3) Lastly, as the US empire reorganizes itself away from Chinese production it will, for at least a few years, weaken as new production centers are located and brought online to replace China. However, the parasitic capitalist class has shown that it will not accept even a temporary slowdown in economic growth. Therefore it will respond by expanding its financialization of the US economy, thereby making the country more vulnerable to economic disruption. Strong political leadership could manage this transition and restrain the worst impulses of the parasitic capitalist class. But the US has shown that for the past 30 years it has neither strong nor unified leadership in US domestic policy matters, so so we’ll get more gridlock and political paralysis. Strong unified leadership in the US state exists only in foreign policy, where a bipartisan consensus yet reigns
All in all I feel that the US empire is entering a lost decade period (let’s say from 2016 to 2028) where the US empire lists and sways from crisis to crisis in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Hopefully the US won’t start that many wars, but again the last 40 years has shown that the US always starts at least one new war in every President’s first term.
I really like this comment.
The US maximum pressure campaign on Iran’s real success seems to be further dividing the world economy into a US Empire vs a Sino-Russo coalition. I suspect Trump was sold on this idea by Steve Bannon, as a way of cutting Chinese manufacturers out of the US economy so the US can rebuild it’s industrial base while putting the screws to the US vassals in South American and Europe.
What a great concept! Well of course. Trump isn’t blindly careening from one boneheaded crisis to another. On the contrary, there’s a method to the madness of this seemingly chaotic and unintelligible Trump foreign policy. Probably this whole mess was planned by Bannon et al from the very start. They’re not incompetent at all. All of this drama and chaos has been part of a well-thought out plan.
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