(—>Part One)
US relations with the two countries holding the most nuclear weapons outside the United States have never been worse. Never have relations with the second, if not premier, economic power in the world been worse. Never have we been as intensely engaged in a proxy war, edging ever closer to getting directly involved, with one of the world’s top three militaries, let alone while fomenting a budding proxy war against another top three military.
As a result, we are the closest to World War 3 since the Cuban missile crisis. And this time not with just one massive country that is a nuclear power, but two.
This state of extreme confrontation is not coincidence. It is a direct consequence of the Biden administration’s disastrous appointment of neo-con and neo-liberal ideologues- imperial end-timers- who’ve had their fingers on every major US foreign policy disaster of the last decades: Libya, Syria, Iraq; to top foreign relations positions.
The dangerous state to which US relations with both China and Russia have devolved is unsurprising with these failed policy pushing throwbacks in power. It is a fundamental neo-con (and neo-liberal, with whom they are indistinguishable on foreign policy; collectively, call them neo-imperialists) precept that both countries must be aggressively confronted, to a level that threatens nuclear Armageddon. Their attitudes mirror the more virulent cold warriors of the 50’s and 60’s, with their fanatical efforts to weaken, confront, and ideally destroy these hostile competitors, more crusaders than logical policy makers. Any thoughts toward considering these ‘evil’ countries’ views, let alone meaningfully working with them, are recoiled from with disgust. Their view of foreign relations is more reminiscent of a grade school playground- or the pigheaded illogic of religious fanatics- than anything akin to adult thinking.
That Joe Biden, a big fan of wars, from his initial and continued support of the illegal Iraq War and occupation, to his initial and continuing support for the cruel unwinnable Drug War, has led the United States to the brink of new, truly disastrous wars is not surprising. What is shocking is the extreme, one note belligerence of his foreign policy, built in an echo chamber full of hawks and neo-imperialists of his own choosing.
This coterie of war mongering crazies he chose as his interlocutors and advisors have assured no voices of reason or moderation get in the way of his long held belief in force and confrontation based policies. This is clearest in his terrifying brinksmanship in relation to Russia after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Literally the biggest proponents of turning the deeply corrupt, already war ravaged nation into a forward NATO base, threatening Russia on her border, have been chosen to advise and lead policy toward Russia.
The most blatant example of this “arsonist appointed fireman” approach is Victoria Nuland. A key player in the 2014 coup that deposed a Ukrainian government attempting to steer a middle path, installing in its place a virulently pro-Western one, Nuland is so distrusted and despised that Russia sanctioned her. Her record in Ukraine alone should have disqualified her from any role in government, or at least any position with the vaguest possibility of engaging with Russia.
But this is the person that the Biden administration chose to go discuss Russia’s clear, emphatic security demands related to Ukraine in late 2021. A person who had recently written an essay titled “Pinning Down Putin”. Someone who was the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, as the US illegally invaded Iraq, ‘tortured some folks’, and set the stage for the rise of ISIS.
It is difficult to imagine a better candidate to reinforce Russian doubts about the reliability and reasonableness of the Biden administration. Undoubtedly the provocative choice to send someone needing a sanctions waiver to enter Russia, THE key player in the coup that they believe turned Ukraine into an alarming existential threat, was seen as a clear signal.
And not only is a hostile, Western armed Ukraine viewed as an existential threat, it represents their greatest existential threat. This effort to build a highly militarized, fanatically anti-Russian, Nazi (not neo-Nazi, old school version) friendly bastion on their border is seen as a dagger pointed at their throat. There is zero Russian tolerance for such an entity, on the route used multiple times to inflict brutal invasions on the Russian people. Pushing this policy and having a non-hostile relationship with Russia are mutually exclusive. But the Biden administration’s appointments screamed that they either don’t get this, or more likely, don’t care what the untermenschen think. The Russians could not miss the message.
Undoubtedly the deeply hostile approach taken by the administration before, during, and after the earlier 2021 Biden/Putin summit meeting was also not missed. Again, an almost comically anti-Russian zealot was involved, in the person of Fiona Hill, who helped prepare the president for the meeting. The unwillingness to engage in even basic signs of open dialogue and shared humanity, like a joint press conference or sharing a meal at the meeting, likely reinforced Russian beliefs that they were dealing with a viscerally Russophobic administration that could not be trusted, except to try to harm Russia at every turn.
Who knows what role this attitude played in Russia’s decision to give up on eight years of failed diplomacy in the form of the Minsk 2 agreements, and chose a military solution in Ukraine. It certainly did play a role in its reflection in Biden’s policies, as a complete unwillingness to make even minor concessions, like openly rejecting Ukraine’s bid to join NATO, in the run up to the war.
This diplomatic face plant on the part of the West has proved incredibly disastrous. Led by the imperial end-timers, decades of Russian warnings, academic scholarship, even sensible policy positions from the likes of Barack Obama regarding Western interference in Ukraine were pointedly ignored. These dim-witted zealots not only poked the bear harder, they got out a gun and started loading it while glaring at it and screaming insults.
The result has been Russia choosing a military solution, to their mind both to one-up an imminent Ukrainian attack, and to finally get a resolution to eight years of unrest and misery in the Donbass. Regardless of how cynical, dishonest, or illegal their action may be viewed, it is undeniable that Ukraine, and Western Europe, should have done everything possible to prevent it. But basic, no pain steps, from openly disavowing NATO membership for Ukraine, to seriously pushing the Ukrainians to fulfill their basic responsibilities under the Minsk 2 accords, failed to accrue sufficient political will to happen. Instead of trying to stomp out the early flames that had started in the smoldering, tinder-dry brush pile that was Ukraine, Macron and Schulz couldn’t be bothered to get their expensive shoes dirty. That failure of effort will go down in history as the most disastrous European leadership screw up since the sleepwalking stumble into the bloodbath of World War One.
But as creatures of a European establishment long since leashed and tail wagging at the Empire’s side, they were unlikely to do anything but dance to the tune from Washington, in this case, the war drums of Biden’s imperial end-timers. Apparatchiks and satraps don’t make imperial policy, they enact it, no matter what it does to their fellow citizens.
And that imperial policy continues to react to every disaster that has rolled out from the failure of diplomacy in Ukraine (through the collapse of Russian trust in it) by doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down. The idea of taking any action, however logical, that would signal failure on their part, is incomprehensible. As the hole gets deeper, they just keep furiously digging, as it is all they know to do.
As sanctions fail to hurt Russia, and backfire spectacularly in the West’s face, especially Europe’s, they throw more sanctions at Russia. Concepts learned in Econ 101, like an increase in a commodity’s scarcity increases its price, are ignored in a hysterical rush to “bankrupt Russia”, leading to a situation that has Russia selling less gas and oil for more money.
Efforts to create economic chaos and immiserate the Russian public to the point they overthrow their government instead has created rampant inflation in the West that has already toppled governments: Italy, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Sweden, with many others to come. The great coming together of the EU and NATO to fight a no quarter economic and proxy war on Russia might very well lead to the crumbling, if not complete dissolution, of both the EU and NATO.
And the most cynical and brutal expression of this policy comes in Ukraine itself, where the slow, grinding, relentless Russian campaign towards an inevitable victory, whatever it takes, is being fought by the West to the very last Ukrainian. As Russia has destroyed practically all the Russian built equipment Ukraine started the war with, the West now throws a wild mishmash of Western weapons to them. And as this menagerie of outdated, second rate, unfamiliar equipment, often in laughably small quantities, gets similarly blown up, they now scheme to set up factories to feed more material into the bonfire. A scheme that just happens to recharge the Western military industrial complex’s profit margins, as the massive windfall of the War on Terror winds down.
And nowhere is there a moment’s pause to question what is happening to all the Ukrainians getting blown up in that equipment. The almost complete lack of casualty reporting beyond various vague ‘really bad’ hints, is studiously ignored. The fanatical willingness of a government that has outlawed all political and media opposition to throw their civilians, including old men and soon women, into a hopeless fight, is used as a fig leaf to avoid any questioning of the morality of sustaining their idiotic crusade for total victory. This despite the fairy tale logic this brave talk represents, easily destroyed by a simple look at a map, or charts comparing Russia and Ukraine’s population, GDP, and military sizes.
And most terrifyingly, there is also almost no pause to consider the implications of pushing even further against Russia’s red lines. Just as repeated, year after year, increasingly emphatic warnings against NATO entrenchment on Russia’s borders were ignored, new Russian threats against further Western interventions are sourly dismissed.
With these neo-imperialist end-timers running the show, the question of what it will take to get them to stop doubling down in their hybrid war efforts is disturbingly hard to fathom. Their repeated demands that the only acceptable end to the war is a total Russian defeat leave them on a road to nowhere, with open NATO intervention in the war seemingly the only card left to play. The once unthinkable idea of starting World War 3 to fight Russia in Ukraine now seems to be edging into consideration, with a hysterical media cheering on the administration’s Russophobic fanatics.
The question of whether these zealots would rather see the world burn than allow the Empire to suffer an embarrassing strategic defeat in Ukraine remains disturbingly open.
And Ukraine is not the only imperial outpost they’re determined to preserve, in the face of grim threats from an understandably agitated neighboring enemy superpower, regardless of the risk to global economic and geopolitical stability. Their developing game plan for Taiwan looks disturbingly akin to their epically disastrous, confrontational agenda in Ukraine.
Preserve harsh Trump era sanctions. Back off not a whit from Trump era belligerence- in fact, escalate. Refuse to negotiate meaningfully, by being unwilling to offer any sort of concessions to enemy concerns; even if they cost you basically nothing, and simply recognize reality. Pump up an essentially un-defendable, massively overmatched state with loads of US weapons and military assistance.
And send an unambiguous message of hostility by dispatching imperial end-timers to handle diplomacy.
Key players in these anti-diplomatic missions to China were several neo-imperialist wreckers: Wendy Sherman, Jake Sullivan, and Antony Blinken. Each has a history that undoubtedly set the Chinese on edge well before any direct interaction. Sherman has a model neo-imperialist pedigree, from working with Iraq War ghoul Madeleine Albright to board positions with imperial mainstays like the Atlantic Council. Sullivan is as pure an example of poisonous Washington swamp creature as could exist; a careerist sycophant with a dogmatic devotion to imperial hegemony, via American exceptionalism and interventionism. Blinken is of the same slimy, scum wallowing genus, like Sullivan a climber with a long history of being on the interventionist- thus disastrously wrong- side of major US policy decisions: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan.
Considering their histories and well documented views, it is not surprising each encounter they had with the Chinese left relations even more tattered. Aggressively anti-Chinese policies and a berating, insulting communication approach have reduced dialogue to little more than pro forma meetings to state positions. For Biden’s imperial end-timer team, these are seemingly more about abusing the Chinese in front of the media than anything else.
The steady souring of the relationship can be waypointed by a series of shockingly hostile encounters orchestrated by these fanatics. The first major meeting with the new administration in Alaska in March 2021 set the tone. Secretary of State Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan fired things off by eschewing the traditional polite, muted opening remarks, instead lambasting China before the cameras, calling them international law breaking criminals and domestic oppressors.
When the stunned and enraged Chinese responded in kind, Antony the Anti-Diplomat then completely broke protocol by insisting the cameras stay so he and Sullivan could get in another round of China bashing, which prompted the Chinese to then demand their own turn, transforming an eight minute opening remark period into an hour long airing of grievances. Not surprisingly, the subsequent meetings yielded no results, not even a joint statement- apparently, nothing could be agreed upon to put in it.
The entire affair seemed to shock the Chinese, who later said they attended “with sincerity and a constructive attitude” but “not only felt the cold weather in Alaska, but also felt the hospitality of the American host.” The American approach provoked them to completely drop Chinese diplomats’ reflexive politeness and careful language, with China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi stating, “Is that the way that you had hoped to conduct this dialogue? Well, I think we thought too well of the US.”
Stop number two on Biden’s road to nowhere good in China relations was another meeting in September of 2021. This time a fresh imperial end-timer, Wendy Sherman, took her turn burning bridges. Any hopes that the disaster in Alaska had prompted a moderation of the administration’s aggressive, hectoring approach were crushed. Sherman not only lectured the Chinese again, as international and domestic (including genocide) criminals, but told the world about it in great detail in a subsequent statement.
The Chinese were clearly taken aback and enraged, expressing “strong dissatisfaction” with Washington’s ‘extremely dangerous China policy.” Again, the US came not to negotiate, but issue demands and deliver diatribes. And to do so with effectively zero effort to be even polite, or keep disagreements private, an incredibly culturally insensitive approach to the respect obsessed Chinese, all while the end-timers themselves acted thin-skinned and belligerent at any sign of disrespect.
Sherman’s meeting was nearly canceled because the Chinese representative was of insufficient rank. The remarkable hour long opening remarks cat fight in Alaska was caused by Anti-Diplomat Antony being incapable of taking a dose of his own medicine. Hilariously, the State Department afterwards released a press statement whining about “grandstanding” and “violating protocol”, when in fact they were the first to grandstand, and committed a much greater protocol violation by calling back the cameras to make a second set of opening remarks.
The actions of these ‘diplomats’ are akin to 8 year olds on a school playground, from the kid complaining about getting punched, when they punched first (from behind), to the kids that were always trying to selectively apply games’ rules to their advantage. The unwillingness to spend the free money of basic respect, anodyne politeness, and simply keeping your mouth shut to buy goodwill is shocking.
Whether this destructive approach results from such a visceral hate of China it’s the best they can do, or an excessive instinct to pander to domestic politics by looking tough is unclear. Or from such a strong combination of arrogance and incompetence they neither care about, nor understand, the damage they’re doing. The end result is the same; another massive nuclear power edging towards de facto breaking off of US relations out of frustration and distrust.
And the question of whether the degradation of relations with the other two great world powers is due to incompetence or intent is a disturbing one. Is it another symptom of a wider rot running wild through the Western leadership class, where increasing corruption has engendered increasing incompetence, as an incestuous elite promotes those most rigidly conformist to their self-serving ideals, with actual competency an afterthought? Or is it the result of the fanaticism of a coterie of imperial end-timers, and their embrace of a maximalist, rigid application of the right of the Empire to impose its ‘beneficent’ will on anywhere in the world, at any time, at any cost required? Or more likely, some horrifying mix of the two?
As the president seems clearly in deep cognitive decline, whether he is even aware of how these maniacs are steering the ship of state into storms is an open question. One wonders how much of a role he even played in the decision to appoint them, that likely a decrepit, demented, war loving old fool was easily steered into implementing (not) President Clinton’s psycho foreign policy.
No doubt, two very much neither decrepit or demented leaders are very much aware: Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. The dangerous shortsightedness of continually emphasizing to a nuclear power your feral hostility and unwillingness to compromise is bad enough, to do it to two at the same time is utter madness.
As a result of their stiff-necked, dogmatic devotion to complete imperial hegemony, Biden’s imperial end-timers have welded Russia and China together in an obviously unbeatable alliance of great powers, collectively representing a large portion of the world’s population, land mass, raw materials, and manufacturing base, sharing borders on the world’s largest and most important continent.
If their goal was to unite enemies and spook them into large increases in the size and sophistication of their armed forces, they’ve done a bang up job. If their goal was to alarm nuclear powers to the point they consider a direct American attack a real possibility, increasing the risk US provocations result in a mistaken exchange of fire, mission accomplished. If they wanted to edge the world closer to World War Three than any time since the Cuban missile crisis, they’ve done excellent work.
And if they wanted to guarantee an accelerated, disastrous collapse of their beloved Empire, they’ve succeeded. Their rigid demands that all bow to the Empire’s will have driven essentially every nation outside the core Western powers to choose sides, overwhelmingly neutrality or alignment with Russia and China.
Ironically, these imperial end-timers are guaranteeing their Empire will soon meet its end. We can only hope the world survives its violent, terrifying death throes.