Once again we owe a debt of gratitude to Cartalucci for his research skills at uncovering the realities of the US Empire builders by accessing rather obscure government and other solid sources that others mostly overlook. Unlike more conventional critics of US foreign policies, he acknowledge the realities of the economic and psychological dynamics of capitalist operations.
The United States does not reside in Asia. Turning Asia into a conflict zone suits it perfectly well. An Asia on the rise poses as a direct competitor to the interests on Wall Street and the politicians who serve them in Washington. The US has nothing to gain from a strong Asia that no longer capitulates to disparate trade deals, political coercion, and threats. Containing China at the cost of peace and prosperity across all of Asia is an added bonus for US policymakers – ensuring that indeed the US maintains primacy in all of Asia “for decades to come.”However like other excellent geopolitical researchers he looks to a multipolar capitalist world for salvation. He, like others who argue from this ideological perspective, see hope for peace and stability in the world by maintaining some kind of precarious balance among competing national ruling classes in a world that is currently dominated by one very aggressive capitalist gang. Thus he concludes his analysis with this statement:
For Asia’s leaders it is important for them to continue on constructive and cooperative means of striking a balance of power between a rising China and the rest of Asia. This must be done while incrementally displacing America’s unwarranted and malicious influence in the region. This does not mean isolating the United States as it seeks to isolate China – but only isolating it to the extent that the US concedes to maintaining normal ties with Asia predicated on equality, not hegemony.Cartalucci fails to to see that US capitalists like all capitalists are born and bred into a class that seeks to take advantage of increasing their wealth and power in a ruthless capitalist world where one must either grow or die. He only wishes to see these capitalist impulses stopped at the national level and maintained by some kind of balance of forces from competing national ruling classes. He and other critics of neoliberalism like F. William Engdahl, Pepe Escobar, and Naomi Klein refuse to acknowledge these built in tendencies of capitalist ruling classes, and they seem very forgetful of the history of the first half of the 20ths century when competing capitalist classes essentially fought two world wars over control of the world. With their military and industrial infrastructure intact after the carnage of WWII, the US ruling class saw their opportunity to control the entire world, to control access to raw materials, markets, and cheap labor (the essential fuels of the capitalist profit machine), and have embarked on this project ever since.
Asian security is no more the United States’ to underwrite as American security is Asia’s to underwrite. Making this clear to US policymakers and the special interests they serve is essential in establishing the fact that no nation is “exceptional” and for any real “international order” to exist, impartial and objective standards must be applied to all – whether they reside in Washington or Beijing, or beyond.
US capitalists, like all capitalists, are largely born and/or bred into a class that seeks to take advantage of increasing their wealth and power in a ruthless capitalist world where one must either grow or die. I take little comfort from the fact that their main obstacles to world domination are represented by China and Russia, both of whom have mixed economies (capitalist and state owned enterprises) and so far have not been infected with the advanced neoliberal stage of imperial capitalism that has taken hold of the US ruling class. The threat of a nuclear war nightmare now haunts the people of the world. In addition this perspective completely ignores the threat of climate destabilization that is a result of the obsessive search for profits by capitalists.
