I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service, and during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. – Major General Smedley D. Butler in 1931.
I listened to the webinar Global Repercussions: The Ukraine War, Russia, and U.S.–China organised by Campaign for Peace, Disarmament & Common Security. There were a couple of questions about the US bases in the Asia Pacific where the panel highlights the hypocrisy of the US administration. It is clear that this panel of academics (Michael Klare, Shihoko Goto, Zhiqun Zhu and chaired by Avi Chomsky), even though they are citizens of the US, are all genuine outsiders in terms of US foreign policy … that they are not part of ‘the blob’ (the foreign policy elite in Washington).
Ukraine and Taiwan
US is a waning power while China is rising … the Biden administration is quite bad at recognising the crisis in US capitalism and tries to compensate by imposing punitive economic sanctions (Cuba, Russia and Iran) while arming ruthless allies (Israel). Successive US administrations try to project US into places it does not belong e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Taiwan.
Biden’s provokes Israel’s continuing war of occupation in Palestine with many thousands of people being shot by the Israeli occupation forces. This shows how bad the Democratic Party is on foreign policy and how influenced it is by lobby groups that only represent an elite.
The failure of any political group in the US to challenge the $54 billion military aid package to Ukraine is an example of this, especially when the US cannot provide adequate health care to prevent over a million COVID deaths.
Note that Zhiqun Zhu is coming to stay in Brisbane for 3 months from July to early October. He will be based at Griffith University. Thanks to Annette Brownlie from Just Peace (Brisbane) for alerting me to this discussion – Ed., 21 May 2022.
