We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

What Drives The West’s Self-Destructive Belligerence?

Click here to access article by Tony Cartalucci from New Eastern Outlook.

There seems to be many outstanding journalists like Cartalucci and Pepe Escobar that place their hopes on a "multi-polar world" in which the directors of the US Empire abandon their mission for world domination. 

In this piece Cartalucci sees clearly that the directors of the US Empire have overreached themselves and are headed for decline.
In reality, Western policies makers are driven by the same arrogant mentality that drove all empires before it. They labor under the delusion that they are invincible, particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union, believing that their military prowess, grip on the hearts and minds of the global population, and economic wizardry were such that no power, however determined to rebuild and reassert itself, could ever challenge them. Additionally, just as all empires before it, the American-led “international order” was built on a geopolitical and economic model of perpetual expansion. “Living and letting live” was simply not an option for Washington, Wall Street, and the City of London.
Combined, this arrogance and need for perpetual expansion has resulted in the one and only possible outcome for any pyramid scheme financial or geopolitical – collapse.
However, he seems to think that the ruling classes of emerging countries like Russia and China will forever maintain a  "legitimacy through consistent merit and substance" and a respect for a multi-polar world. 
As Russia, and even China, seek to counter Western sanctions, encirclement, and containment, they must resist the temptation to construct their own empires. Instead, they must look inward toward socioeconomic and technological development that renders restrictions placed upon them moot while reinforcing a multipolar world order of independent but collaborating nations rather than a unipolar order that demands centralized interdependence.
Why such optimism? He recognizes that the US Empire "was built on a geopolitical and economic model of perpetual expansion", but what is this model called? Capitalism. No one disputes that it is a system that requires growth and expansion. So, are not Russia and China capitalist countries? How can he argue that they will "resist the temptation to construct their own empires"? Of course, the way all capitalist countries are destroying the planet for human habitation, it is unlikely that we will need to worry about any more ravaging empires.