The US is behaving as many declining empires have done before – over-reaching in multiple military adventures in a vain attempt to prevent the rise of competitors and regain past supremacy. It wants full spectrum dominance, and if it can’t have that then it will wreck everything for everyone and hope to be the last man standing. The US has engaged primarily in economic warfare for a long time, given that those are far more popular at home than kinetic warfare. It’s dominant position in global finance has allowed to to weaponise the reserve currency, sanctioning countries that do not sufficiently subordinate themselves to rules devised by the US for its own benefit. They plan to extend this dominance greatly through the issuance of stablcoins, as discussed in the last post here.
In addition to financial repression, the US is now attempting to blockade its rivals, with a view to preventing them from trading. It has already done this with Venezuela, and now Iran. Its European vassal states are busy turning the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake so as to blockade Russia. The Iran blockade also targets Asia, as many Asian countries rely on energy impkrts from the Gulf. The ultimate target is China, which is the rising power the US most wants to weaken. Not only are vessels bound for China being disrupted, but the US is also bombing aspects of the belt and road initiative and pipelines, as these are meant to bypass the shipping lanes that the US is attempting to control. These include not only Hormuz, but also the Strait of Malacca, the Taiwan Strait and others. Malacca is particularly vital, and the US is working on a deal with Indonesia to establish a military presence there. The US marine corps has essentially been forged into an anti-shipping force.
There was recently a meeting between the Trump and Xi, but this achieved virtually nothing. China undertands the position of the US, and even warned Trump about the danger of falling into Thucydides Trap, where a declining power beats itself to death against a rising power. America doesn’t engage in real diplomacy. It uses performative meetings as a distraction, or as cover for a surprise attack, but never engages in any informed or realistic compromise. It also never recognises any other parties interests as valid. Other countries may send trained and experienced diplomats with extensive documentation to talks, but the US sends unqualified, inexperienced, and biased grifters like Kushner and Witkoff. China, Russia, and Iran will be polite to them, but will not take them seriously.
The US knows that its window for attempting to reassert primacy is short, so it’s not going to curtail its efforts at destruction and destabilisation, but it does want to manage the process by not pushing so hard that the rest of the world unites to defeat it. It wants to comtinue fighting a global dirty war against everyone else. It wants to create energy dependency on its supplies in order to have leverage over more countries, particularly in Asia, so they can be vassalised as Europe has already been. Leverage could potentially be used to force these countries to act against their own interests, for instance cutting trade with China. The US wants its adversaries fighting each other, and it wants its vassals to fight proxy wars on its behalf. Needless to say, it places no value on the lives of the outsiders used in this way. The Gulf monarchies have already discovered that hosting an American presence and allowing the US to use their airspace in the conflict with Iran has not protected them, but has made them a target. They’ve paid a heavy price in destroyed infrastructure, and may yet pay an even higher one. Two million Ukrainians have already died fighting NATO’s war against Russia, and western Europeans will likely be next. Similarly, the US wants Japan, South Korea, the Phillippines, Taiwan and possibly Australia to sacrifice themselves against China at some point.
America’s incestuous relationship with Israel is particularly harmful to any prospect for world peace. Israel is at war with all its neighbours, and insists that it can only feel safe if none of its neighbours ever can. It’s goading the US into ever more violence. If there were ever a peace settlement, Israel could destroy it at any time with a false flag event, or an overt attack that would draw the US in deeper to protect it. Virtually the entire US government appears to have an Israel first attitude, thanks to the huge bribes Israel pays to each of them. Israel has morphed into a barbaric apartheid state determined to engage in genocide in service of its greater Israel project, but this appalling behaviour is rarely mentioned in the supine American media.
The war in the Gulf is effectively disarming the US, and likely accelerating its bankruptcy. Israel is determined to force hostilities to continue until Iran is completely destroyed, but this may not be possible given the lack of armaments. The US military industrial complex is bloated, corrupt, slow, over-priced, and produces weaponry that may already be obsolete once manufactured. Trump has delusions of grandeur regarding golden domes and fancy new planes and ships, but war has moved on. None of those would be effective in the era of drones and hypersonic missiles. The delusions are simply a characteristic of late stage empire.
