Every dying Empire has its truth telling prophet and America had its own with Chalmers Johnson. Johnson correctly compared the decay of the American empire, with its well over 600 overseas military bases, with the fall of the Roman Empire whereas the Senate becomes a wealthy corporate club and irrelevant compared to the ruling Military Industrial Congressional Complex
Chalmers Johnson was a truth teller and prophet in a political environment where few would stand up to the interests and secrecy of the Pentagon and the intelligence community ~ and since his passing in November of 2010, many of his prophetic fears have been realized in the Obama administration.
Johnson, author of Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis,The Last Days of the American Republic, talks in this video interview about the similarities in the decline of the Roman and Soviet empires and the signs that the U.S. empire is exhibiting the very same symptoms ~ overextension, corruption and the inability to reform. (Watch at least the first 20 minutes and also the very end where he predicts an economic collapse)
Johnson’ s main points were; The United States is treading the same three steps as the former Soviet Union;
Inability to deal with corporate corruption.
Imperial over-stretch is leading to fiscal insolvency ( 600 plus bases throughout the world )
Inability to reform, thus accelerating the inevitable fall.
I strongly agree with [former US CIA Director] R. James Woolsey and [a former CIA analyst and Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, an Advisory Board to Congress] Dr. Peter Vincent Pry that the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat to the U.S. demands our strongest attention (“How North Korea Could Cripple the U.S.,” op-ed, May 21).
Could anything have checked America’s mad rush to war in Iraq in 2003, driven as it was by a cabal of neoconmen intent on cynically manipulating the trauma of 9-11 to achieve a different agenda?
Perhaps (1) if Colin Powell had the courage to resign on principle rather than allowing himself to be pressured into giving his disgraceful imitation of Adlai Stevenson's performance at the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or almost certainly (2) if the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair sided with France, Germany, and Russia and the majority of Europeans in opposing the Iraq war. Of course, no one will ever know, but Powell enjoyed immense moral stature at the time, and without his cheerleading, the veneer of Bush’s and Cheney’s moral authority would certainly have been far weaker. The case of Blair, aka Bush’s poodle, is more complex: If the UK sided with Europe, Bush would have been isolated and the march to war very likely might well have been still born.
But a large number, perhaps a majority, of the English people do not see themselves as being Europeans. And the English elites, like Blair, trust instead in using the UK’s “special relationship” with the US to punch above their weight in world affairs. Viewed narrowly, the UK-US special relationship has roots in WWII, but the UK’s proud sense of separateness from Europe reaches back at least a 1000 years in history and is grounded in its island geography. The English have never resolved the question: Are they part of Europe? The UK’s tepid membership in the EU illustrates the point.
The below op-ed by Immanuel Wallerstein argues that European question is again coming to forefront of British politics and pressure to leave the EU is mounting. Moreover, the question is being complicated by the growing regional tensions in Northern Ireland, Wales, and especially Scotland.
WASHINGTON — Adm. James G. Stavridis, who stepped down this month as NATO’s supreme commander, has been at war in two wars — overseeing the alliance’s role in the enduring mission in Afghanistan as well as the shorter combat air campaign over Libya.
Combined with his tenure before NATO — he was the top officer at the military’s Southern Command, for a total of seven years in a senior four-star billet — Admiral Stavridis had been the longest-serving global combatant commander in the American military.
As he rose through the ranks of command over a 37-year career in uniform, Admiral Stavridis also came to be recognized as one of the military’s most prolific authors on strategy, operations and tactics. Today, though, ask what worries him most, and he answers in a single word: convergence.
The U.S. Army continues to be one of the most thoughtful of the services. Below is a superb list of responsibilities associated with the protection of civilians. Where the list goes wrong is in assuming that the military will have a major responsibility across all these elements. In fact US thinking continues to be severely flawed at each level of analysis:
Strategic: If the strategy is non-existent or corrupt to the bone, based on ideology or financial bribes rather than ethical evidence-based decision-support, it will inevitably fail in prolonged expensive ways because nothing done at the lower levels can overcome ignorant, arrogant, mis-directed strategy that refuses all ethical evidence-based decision-support.
Operational. If Whole of Government capabilities have been been developed that are agile, scalable, and truly represenative of all elements of national power, the campaign will inevitably fail (it may take a quarter century or longer, but it will fail) for lack of harmonization, legitimization, and the embedded inability to do what is needed in the manner that is needed (e.g. soft indigenously-embraced contributions rather than predatory corrupt practices).
Tactical. If the military is the only tool, and its insertion is bracketed by strategic idiocy, operational incoherence, and technical albatrosses (aviation, fuel-heavy mobilty, communications inadequate to “eight tribes” harmonization local to global, lack of language and culture skills), then however heroic the military might be in executing its often insane and all too often illegal unconstitutional orders, it will fail.
Technical: For 50 years the US military has been a pork pie. What we build has been determined by who bribes Congress the most effectively, and who offers retiring flag officers the most lucrative second career. It has also been gored by a lack of counterintelligence against religious and financial traitors, by a lack of honest design, honest operational testing and evaluation, and honest field commanders willing to blow the whistle as soon as possible. Four percent of the US military force takes 80% of the casualties, and gets 1% of the Pentagon budget. This is criminally insane and insanely criminal.
Since really waking up to all that is wrong in 1988, I have agonized over the broken US intelligence archipelago focused on spending money rather than producing intelligence, and on the broken US process for planning, programming, budgeting, and executing Whole of Government capabilities that are not at this time responsive to the public interest — they have been co-opted by the recipients of the public's revenue and are comprised of one-third waste, one-third treason, and one-third well-intentioned but over-whelmed good mired in a cesspool of bureaucratic corruption and political treason.
Below is an excellent list, additional commentary, and further references.
Protests swept Turkey on Friday and deep into Saturday morning as thousands of protesters called on prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to resign.
What began as a demonstration against a shopping mall project turned into one of the biggest challenges in recent years to Mr Erdogan’s rule, as whole districts of Istanbul resounded to the banging of pots and pans into the early hours of the morning. Drivers hit car horns in support of the demonstrators.
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Click on Image to Enlarge
However, the size of the protests, and the speed with which they grew, appeared to be a reaction not just to the police crackdown on the initial demonstration in Gezi Park but to Mr Erdogan’s general approach to government.
“Gezi park is the new Tahrir of the region,” said Koray Caliskan, a Turkish columnist, in reference to the epicentre of Egypt’s 2011 revolution.
The current multibillion-dollar campaign to counter transnational terrorism, defeat insurgencies, and stabilize fragile states blends diplomacy, defense, and development. A principal tool in this vast effort is humanitarian and development assistance — what has come to be known as militarized aid. Flows of aid to fragile states have grown significantly over the past decade and are increasingly concentrated on a few frontline countries. The rhetoric of foreign assistance policymakers is infused with terminology derived from national security and counterterrorism doctrine. Defense ministries now control vast aid budgets.
Militarized aid is delivered by soldiers or private contractors at the behest of a political-military leadership. In Afghanistan, for example, the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) weld military, aid agency, and contractor components to multiply force where, in the words of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, ”the U.S. military’s ability to kick down the door [must be] matched by its ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward.” Yet it is unclear whether militarized aid is effective. In research carried out for the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, Andrew Wilder dubbed militarized aid ”a ‘weapons system’ based on wishful thinking.” And it appears increasingly evident that such aid actually damages the greater stabilization effort in three ways: it erodes humanitarian principles, spreads risk, and is often of poor quality.
Humanitarian principles are derived from the laws of war. These principles include, among others, humanity (aid must save lives and alleviate suffering), impartiality (aid is based solely on need), and independence (aid is not suborned to political or military objectives). These are not abstract, do-good notions. They are born of conflict, and there are hardheaded reasons why they define a civilian space for aid.
Adhering to these tenets assures those in war-torn communities that the primary interest of aid workers is helping civilians survive with dignity. As a result, they grant humanitarian organizations access and protect aid workers’ safety. They may even mediate with armed opposition groups on the aid organizations’ behalf. This is how relief agencies continue to operate in violent places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.
Even given the best intentions, massive budgets and pressure to spend almost always translate into ineffective use of funds.
