Why would you want to prevent other people from prospering?

I remember that Newsweek article. Had to laugh. So self-referential. Other Jews at the time plumped their chest and claimed that the Chinese were calling their top NYC businessmen “Tai Ren,” which they translated as ‘Big Man’ (correct straight translation) as if to confirm the Talmud reference to their business acumen was accurate. The Jews loved it; I remember a few strutting about it, loving the term.

Little did they know the Chinese were mocking, sneering at, them. The Chinese value humility more than anything. Accepting, and approving, the appellation Tai Ren proves they had no clue.

The Chinese are running rings around them, playing to their vanity. What the Chinese are doing, as Escobar’s article elucidates, proves it. Because Jews would have to accept a version of history that they refuse to recognize. It was the vast history from 700 AD to 1800 AD in which the Chinese and the Islamic world ruled the world in scientific discovery and trade that was the most significant advance in world history and in which Jews (and Christians) played no part, stuck as they were in shtetls and the Dark Ages. [Just check out Zheng He, for example.] Jews (and Christians) have never in the history of the world created anything that matches the output, grandeur, and significance of Islamic Science. Not ever. Not once. Check out Robert Briffault’s “The Making of Humanity.” Part II. THE GENEALOGY OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. Available on archive.org.

No examination of the New Silk Road would be complete without looking at The New Great Game series over at Boiling Frogs Post.
As this piece demonstrates

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2015/07/16/the-new-great-game-round-up-july-15-2015/

@chess, not Battleship, would be the game of the century.

Some years ago, Asia Times published a post of the then still mysterious Spengler (aka David Goldman after) “Americans play Monopoly, Russians chess”.

I remember that on Spengler’s forum, a commentator (could’ve possibly been me?) commented facetiously: Americans play Monopoly, Russians chess, but Chinese play Go.
Someone replied: Americans play poker, a manly game, they can’t waste time with silly games, they are achievers!
There was a reply to that: Americans play poker with marked cards and if they lose they pull out the gun. The winner takes all!

Pure idiocy, of course.

STRATFOR is not a “neocon”, but a ZIOCON Israel advocacy front. It’s owned by Zionist Jew millionaire George Friedman. In its 2010 “Study”, Friedman accused Tehran for supporting Eritrean anti-USrael regime with funds and military training to have foothold at country’s port in Asab.

Both Washington and Tel Aviv were against Muslim-majority Eritrea’s independence from pro-Israel Ethiopian Christian regime. In August 1989, Herman Jay Cohen (Zionist Jew), US ambassador to Ethiopia, assured anti-Muslim communist military dictator Mengistu of Washington’s commitment to preserve Ethiopia’s “territorial integrity” and keep Ethiopia intact.

http://rehmat1.com/2014/05/26/us-israeli-war-on-eritrean-people/

American farmers need over thousand acres of farmland to justify their expensive toys (a combine costing over $300K).

Chinese construction companies like this need more work.

Going out of borders to find more work is important to keep companies afloat.

because it is their wish. it is their fervent wish, nothing more.

you know how some people deal with fear/horror/terror, by closing their eyes.

There is an alternative view about our global future. I am not believer yet. But good to know and exam its possibility.

For those that are interested in reading these kind of grand geopolitical theories, you probably have heard of STRATFOR. If you have not heard of STRATFOR, its an American neocon think tank that believes the USA will rule the world forever, they base this assumption because of the American river system for transport of goods and because it is in North America as one of the main reasons. They also believe that China is about to collapse and will become a non entity in the globe (according to the book “The next 100 years”), the reason for this is because China has a bad river system and that it cannot compete with the American one. I have yet to find out why a river system is so important, especially if rail systems can move goods faster and can go wherever you build them to.

Does anyone here know about this whole river system theory and do they think it is valid ? I think its nonsense, surely rail as a technology surpasses all of that, didn’t America grow both territoryly and economically because from it, and if so then why shouldn’t China ?

Yes, Xi is a reader of economic – but may be from a much better source – Talmud.

On December 29, 2010 – The Newsweek magazine published an article by Isaac Stone Fish under the heading “Selling the Talmud as a Business Guide” in China.

Isaac claimed his Chinese friends believe that Jews are “Very smart, very clever, and very good at business”. One of the other success stories attributed to Talmud, by Isaac is that even a hotel in Taiwan is named Talmud.

http://rehmat1.com/2010/12/31/newsweek-talmud-is-a-business-guide-in-china/

Second? They’re going to build ten of them.

China is the world’s largest producer of coal, as well is only matched by India as the world’s largest importer of the same. Mega-cement plants? Another HUGE greenhouse emissions contributor, burying those tentative steps towards the ‘renewables’ touted by Escobar. CO2 at 400 parts per million is the new norm and we’re only beginning to see the effect. And then, those Christian ‘millennial’ generals at the Pentagon make the WWIII scenario quite overarching:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8684257/Jesus-loves-nukes-US-Air-Force-taught-the-Christian-Just-War-Theory.html

“I don’t know what weapons will be used to fight World War Three but World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones” -Albert Einstein

Better had Pepe focused his thinking on a different insight of the ancient Greek…

“Their judgment was based more upon blind wishing than upon any sound pre-vision; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy” -Thucydides

…considering ‘sustained development’ is precisely the principle of cancer (on a planetary scale.)

Pepe’s just another narcissistic ‘European cultural mentality’ in denial of reality while preaching Pollyanna pie-in-the-sky…

http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2013/05/15/youve-got-apes/

…and suffering a bad case of ‘apes’

If you want to know why Washington is doing something, then follow the dollars. The most important war that Washington fights every year is about budget dollars. First defending the bloated military budgets against calls for sanity, then the interservice squabbles about who gets how much. The whole ‘Pivot to Asia’ is the Navy’s counterattack against the Army and their special forces getting a huge chunk of the money to fight in the middle east. The Navy is building one giant, expensive, boondoggle aircraft carrier. Strangely enough, the Navy can’t figure out why a ship named after Gerald Ford seems full of glitches and keeps tripping over its own feet and just doesn’t seem to work right. And they want a 2nd super-expensive carrier after they soak the tax payer for as much as they can get out of the Ford. They can’t justify this by bombing terrorists in caves, and they can’t justify it with a land-war against Russia, therefore, The China Threat.

[…] The Geopolitics of American Global Decline: Washington vs. China in the Twenty-First Century by Alfred McCoy for TomDispatch (via Unz Review).   An earlier and more skeptical view of U.S. geopolitical strategy. […]

The basic point, I think, is that Obama is making all these extraordinarily sensible foreign policy decisions because a) he’s a smart guy who knows the facts and b) he doesn’t need to worry about re-election.

He’s dragged the centre ground closer to reality in opposition to the (consistently wrong) neocons and their hack think-tanks. Cuba is another example. Not helping ISIS by smashing Assad is another. Who knows, in the last few weeks he might decide to teach the Saudis the lesson they’ve been asking for since 2001.

“The several hundred Republicans who have thrown their hats into the ring for the 2016 presidential race and the war hawks in Congress (mainly but hardly only Republicans) have already been in full howl about the Vienna nuclear deal with Iran. ”

The Republican candidates should be known as The Stepford Candidates.

[…] lengthy article is out describing China’s economic and military rise.  More detail is here.  A summary […]

[…] {1} http://www.unz.com/article/the-geopolitics-of-american-global-decline/ […]

[…] Alfred McCoy, The Geopolitics of American Global Decline, The Unz […]

What about China’s demographics? That doesn’t look too good.

http://www.economist.com/node/18651512

[…] Alfred McCoy, The Geopolitics of American Global Decline, The Unz […]

[…] then quite possibly…. “the empire of the world would be in sight.” — Alfred McCoy, The Geopolitics of American Global Decline, The Unz […]

[…] Alfred McCoy, The Geopolitics of American Global Decline, The Unz […]

[…] then quite possibly…. “the empire of the world would be in sight.”— Alfred McCoy, The Geopolitics of American Global Decline, The Unz Review“The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the […]

[…] Alfred McCoy, The Geopolitics of American Global Decline, The Unz […]

[…] Alfred McCoy, The Geopolitics of American Global Decline, The Unz […]

Also the race is in AI/HLMI and Nano technology leading to molecular assemblers in production.

will America be able to match the talent in Eurasia which threatens its and its corporations’ cybersecurity?

very pertinent test case…..my own feeling is that we will

[Laugh]. Gelman (at Columbia) might claim otherwise. Same result nevertheless, more or less…..

Ah, like how owning the Sahara Desert and Central Africa would be the key to having a profitable and powerful empire in Africa. Not South Africa or Nigeria or Egypt, linked by sea.

Agree mostly with Ed and Phil Neal.

The Heartland idea – I can see how it makes sense in a way. Having that land means that you can act to dominate the periphery, where stuff actually gets made and where people actually live. And it means you can bulk ship natural resources there easily.

At the same time, owning and managing that empty interior is expensive. Not cost free.

It’s not necessarily cheaper than a sea network, dealing with the attendant problems that entails.

Similarly, Russia’s issue with manufacturing is not that it lacks access to resources. It’s that it can’t make products that people want to buy (even if it has access to some good engineering that people generally won’t pay for but which the state will).

China’s issue with manufacturing is not that it lacks access to resources. It’s that it’s still in low value sectors relative to the number of Chinese the state needs to support. Solve that, and why go to the cost of investing in the resource extraction? Let the Russians and Central Asians that don’t know how to make things pay for that shit, and sell them back finished products.

If it works, I’m sure the Americans will be the first to use the increased access to resources to buy them with clever finance and lead in manufacturing though (‘cos they’re dynamic, culturally being pretty Anglo is always a plus, not overpopulated and reasonably smart, just for a few).

It seems like most “Colonize world…. Profit!” plans, and not the reality that empires are expensive and barely profitable and even when you’re operating them, at cost and with investment (it ain’t Africans who funded those African railroads to ship gold and diamonds out, they were far too piss poor), and can get resources out of them, then….

…. someone else ends up buying those resources at massively reduced cost (see what happened with Spain and New World gold and silver), and so you don’t actually see much of a relative advantage, especially if they end up managing them well, and then using them at the right time to exert leverage over you.

I’m talking about geopolitically. Geopolitically, Russia is not really weaker.

You are right – Pat has done more the most and must be commended.

I do think there is a little bit of a change – that there is in limited quarters a willingness to speak up.

Let us hope.

“Our folly with China was in deluding ourselves into believing that by throwing open U.S. markets to goods made in China, we would create a partner in prosperity. What we got, after $4 billion in trade deficits with Beijing, was a gutted U.S. manufacturing base and a nationalistic rival eager to pay back the West for past humiliations.

China wants this to be the Chinese Century, not the Second American Century. Is that too difficult to understand?”

What I found funny is that pat actually thinks because we, the USA trades with China = China should become our bitch and follow our lead.

If we seriously think China as a partner, we wouldn’t even be thinking about it in the terms above. We wanted China to be our bitch but it didn’t become one.

There are no partners in the current unipolar world. USA never wanted one and will do everything it can to prevent one from ever appearing.

Words like those are how PJ became effectively marginalised in the first place. Our Ruling Class doesn’t like people saying those words.

I’m impressed that Mackinder is being referenced increasingly in the UNZ Review; this is turning to be a serious geopolitical blog!

“Believing liberal democracy to be the wave of the future, that all peoples, given the chance, would embrace it, we invaded Iraq, occupied Afghanistan and overthrew the dictator of Libya.”

That’s what our leaders told us and them why they were making war on them – to give them freedom and democracy.

But when those peoples actually do democracy that reflects their own interests, instead of our elites’ interests, then their autarkies are replaced with corrupt dictators or oligarchs our elites choose whose first loyalty is to bribery and the foreign power, economic and military, that installs and props them up.

As if imposing a government that’s in the interests of another power could ever be democracy, even if you’re hegemon enough to be able to lord it over others.

The lords giveth, and the lords taketh away.

When things don’t appear to make sense, perhaps they do make sense, but just in some other way.

then there will likely be some sort of detente between the US and the relatively weaker party.

1. Russia is already a “relatively weaker” party, at least in Wall Street universe;
2. United States committed cultural suicide in Russia and I mean suicide;
3. United States is not treaty-worthy party anymore. Any treaty signed with the US is not worth the paper it is written on.

This assumes that the Chinese and Russians haven’t learned anything from the last 100 years. Something I doubt, as both China and Russia fear the West far more than each other now. This kind of hubris, the thought that at any time the west can effectively go back to divide and conquer, is what got the west into the bad position it is in now.

Not one “I” word, not one “Z” word, not one “J” word – this is unacceptable.

How can you explain US foreign policy for the last 60 years with out those words.

Boycott Disinvest Sanction

The point is that if either Russia or China become relatively too strong, then there will likely be some sort of detente between the US and the relatively weaker party.

Yes, indeed.

reenact and exploit another “Sino-Soviet split” which is likely to occur if either China or Russia becomes too strong.

Any other irrelevant and beaten to death cliches here? Nominally, China is already “stronger” than Russia, because it produces way more consumer goods junk than Russia ever will. Reality and the “strength” , however, are not measured with Wall Street “tools” and metrics. The problem, however, if you didn’t notice is in those pesky details like the fact (one among many) that China still doesn’t have decent, let alone world-class, jet engine, Russia does. Hence China’s really desperate desire to get her hands on SU-35s. China-made subs even today are very noisy and highly unsurvivable beyond First Island Chain, and even inside this chain it is a huge question. And if one goes over this (much longer) list, granted one understand the difference between some junk like iPhone and real hi-tech, a very peculiar picture emerges. The foundation of any world-class nation is its machine-building complex. But then again, this is not what they teach in all those “business” and “economic” schools in Ivy League madrasas. Russia will be doing just fine as the China’s supplier of resources and, when necessary, of technologies which China still does not and, most likely, will not posses for a long time. And that is just small detail.

There may come a day when the majority of Americans will turn on the Jewish Americans (like Hitler and the Germans did) for ruining our country all for the benefit of Israel and their own pocketbook.

Pat Buchanan should be our Secretary of State!

It is also apparent that the American created ISIS is continuing the campaign to extirpate the Christian Church from the Mid East. The two thousand year old Catholic Church in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, etc. has been savaged by the onslaught of the American foreign policy. As a Catholic I well know who the enemy is and he is located on the banks of the Potomac. How any Catholics or Christians can continue to wave the flag of American imperialism and continue to sent their offspring into these disastrous wars is inconceivable. It is apparent who the foretold “beast” is and the number 666 now applies to the American power structure and its culture.

With the emphasis being placed on stupidity. Here in Europe we shall pay the price for Obama’s ill-advised calls for sanctions against Russia at the Bavarian G7 summit. A shame Obama’s mummy didn’t read little Barack bedtime stories of fairy tales instead of Marx and Baldwin. At least he would have learned what calamity befell the Sleeping Beauty when the eighth fairy didn’t get invited to the big feast.

“And if the neocons get back into power in 2017, …”

They have never been out of power.

“Hubris, ideology, bellicosity and stupidity all played parts.”

Excellent synopsis.

“The captive nations of Central and Eastern Europe were breaking free.”

Now they are captives of the US.

“And most of America’s stupid people don’t vote.”

Not true, there is no way the assholes we have in office would have been elected without idiots voting.

I draw distinctions. You don’t see Hezbollah chopping off people’s heads, suicide-bombing mosques, rounding women up into slave-wifery. The Sunni are the ones going nuts. The Shia are not.

You should try a different line with that. After centuries of raping and pillaging, we’ve got a legacy to live up to.

In all seriousness, though, you don’t detect the slighest note of savagery in any particular group of Sunnis? Nothing ISIS is doing that could be described as a rampage? “There are no savages in the Islamic State?”

Yeah, so long as this wave of mania persists amongst the Sunni extremists, I hope for the day everyone else in the world breaks bread and kicks the shit out of them whenever they act up.

I think the US is in a relatively strong position here, as it will be positioned to reenact and exploit another “Sino-Soviet split” which is likely to occur if either China or Russia becomes too strong. This is a structural feature that no amount of pipelines or economic development will change.

Please tell me what is wrong with this picture.

The US, the UK, Canada, Australia, the NATO, the French, the Germans, the Saudis, the Emiratis, Turkey, and Israel and a host of well armed and well organized armed forces are fighting a collection of ragtag volunteers of Al-Qaeda and ISIS in a global war on terror.

On the other hand, the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, the NATO, the French, the Germans, the Saudis, the Emiratis, Turkey and Israel are funding, arming, and training the volunteers of Al-Qaeda and ISIS to fight what the Jordanian King calls a Shiite crescent.

No Shiite country has ever attacked any of the world powers or even threatened them. All the attacks, such as 9/11, the World Trade Center, the USS Cole, etc. have been carried out by Sunni terrorists with the help of Sunni monarchies.

Please help me understand this picture. I am really confused.

“Too many stupid people in America”. True but not very relevant. You don’t want seriously stupid private soldiers but America is much better able to put all important boots on the ground than European countries where that really does matter. And most of America’s stupid people don’t vote. Still it is important that America’s, or the Angloshere’s dominance of non-stupid activity is being whittled away. Narrow test case: will America be able to match the talent in Eurasia which threatens its and its corporations’ cybersecurity?

Well thank G for those Jewish university administrators for holding back the tide of Asian dominance in the Ivies (vide Ron Unz’s “The Myth of American Meritocracy”)

“rampaging Sunnis”

Why? You whitrashs wish to continue with the rampaging and pillaging, forever? You should take a break, after centuries of hard work.

It’s not all bad news, Pat.

Israel occupies and plants settlers in more and more territory as the days go by.

Israel’s unregistered foreign agents wield ever-increasing power in not only the US Congress but in state capitals in the nation.

The lead writers at mondoweiss.net remind readers frequently that “Jews are now the elite in USA.”

Jane Eisner, editor of The Forward, told a J Street audience that “Jews are now the wealthiest, most powerful group in USA.”

So how can you say that “it was in the Middle East that the most costly blunders were committed.” From the point of view of the above declarations and benchmarks, these were not blunders at all.

But from the broader American point of view, “Five weeks of shock and awe” were not America’s finest hour, they were the prequel to a sustained display of hubris. The winter of American blunders started with George H W Bush’s unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 1991. Bush committed what Leo Strauss termed the reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy —

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/bush-gulf-war/

“Bush, a World War II veteran, condemned the aggression and spoke of it in terms of “good and evil,” often comparing Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler. For Bush, the only possible resolution to this “naked act of aggression” would be a clear and unequivocal withdrawal of Iraqi forces. And Bush became convinced early on that only military action would force Saddam to pull back. ”

In fact, just as the Danzig question could have been settled non-violently, so too could Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait have been retracted through the diplomatic efforts of Jordan’s King Hussein and his counselor, Jack O’Connell.

—

Believing liberal democracy to be the wave of the future, that all peoples, given the chance, would embrace it, we invaded Iraq, occupied Afghanistan and overthrew the dictator of Libya.

Isn’t that a self-contradicting statement?

“Liberal democracy” means that a people choose their own government as an expression of their own national will.

Invading and imposing what an outside entity — the USA — thinks is the “wave of the future” is the antithesis of sovereign self-government.

G H W Bush was stuck in a delusional remembrance of US “victory” in Europe — conveniently forgetting that USA committed war crimes in the firebombing of German civilians to “win” that unnecessary war, and that in the final analysis it was Russia that sealed the deal (committing more atrocities against civilians in the process).

The imperative, before “retrenchment” can be considered, is for the American people to ask themselves to think really clearly about why they went to war against Germany, twice, in the 20th century;
why they and their leaders have never been held to account for the war crimes the USA (and other Allies) committed against so many people in WWII;
how proud they are to have enjoyed an era of phenomenal prosperity at the cost of vanquishing their European brothers, sisters and heritage;
and to get over “greatest generation” and “good war” delusions.

Such a lot of things unsaid – such as Russia supporting secessionists in East Ukraine only because the Imperialist States of Amerikastan saw fit to overthrow the government there in a stage managed colour revolution using nazi thugs as stormtroopers. Such as ISIS only having come into the picture as a consequence of deliberate Amerikastani strategy to foment civil war in Syria to overthrow Assad. Probably the most ludicrous assertion is the one that says Amerikastan had any intention of spreading democracy anywhere. This is the same Imperialist States which backs the cannibal headhunters of Saudi Barbaria and the no less evil scum in Egypt, Qatar and Bahrain, after all.

“Would you just let Russia have its way with Ukraine?”
Could you enlighten us on why Russian Federation would need a crisis in Ukraine? How did it happen that the State Department was so thoroughly involved in the Maidan revolution? How come that the State Dept. found itself on a side of Ukrainian neo-Nazis, McCain and the then CIA Director Brennan in the same picture with the neo-Nazi leaders? – Guess, this is now a reliable sign of “democracy on the march…
Take a note of the coincidence du jour: Brennan (CIA) comes to Kiev. The very next day Kiev begins military actions (civil war) against federalists in east Ukraine.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/hidden-agenda-of-cia-director-brennans-trip-to-kiev-initiate-the-use-of-force-in-eastern-ukraine/5378263

Philip Neal
*Control of the Indian Ocean conferred instant empire on marginal Portugal and its successors, and is still the key today. You do not mention China’s ‘string of pearls’ strategy in the Indian Ocean and its increasing involvement in Africa. That if anything is what to watch.* [sic]

whats wrong with china doing business with africa, why should it worry U ?
anyway u’r behind the curve, the master of the universe doesnt just watch, it has virtually recolonise africa under the guise of the fraudulant wot and ebola, in case u havent noticed.

the socalled string of pearl is a chinese strategy to defend its vital energy transit sea lane.
once again u can relax kid.
myanmar, a key component of the socalled sop is already co-opted,
thailand is again under pro us military rule, pro china prez in sri lanka has recently been relaced with a washington patsy…
all in all, your mou in washington has everthing nicely sewn up already?
happy now ?
why dont u just go back enjoying your nba series , the kadhasans, and leave politics to caesar, the way i see it, he has been doing a fine job ruling the universe.
hmm, if only he’d spend some time at home hehehe

http://www.sott.net/article/296387-Decades-of-neglect-have-led-to-a-railway-crisis-in-the-United-States

@ Vendetta,

That money was not pissed away, it went into the pockets of a few people who got all those contracts for training locals, building “infrastructure” etc., all at obscenely inflated prices, for “security reasons”… It is funny, but everybody the US trains ends up bolting from combat when the shit hits the fan: it happened in Mali, in Nigeria, and recently in Iraq where more than 2,300 hummers were abandoned to the barbarians by US-trained Iraqi that fled combat…

That is corruption, American-style, and that is why the vast majority of leaders in the “Third-World” only pay lip service to US diplomats and other activists when those people lecture them on “corruption”.

Most Americans do not realize that people in the “poor” parts of the World are a lot smarter than they are, especially when it comes to politics.

The only reason the US, Britain, the French, Portuguese or the Spanish were able to conquer anything in the past is by way of deception: they abused the trust of the people that they eventually pillaged and slaughtered. Had the Africans killed off all those early adventurers à-la-American instead of giving them water, food, and shelter when they found themselves stranded in that far-away place, there would have been no slave trade nor genocide in North America as those early scouts would never have been heard from back in those musty European fiefdoms…

Ed. I disagree with you.

To benefit from this huge land mass you do not need to physically hold the heartland. What you need to do is to create infrastructure, so trade from one region can happen with trade from another region cheaply and quickly.

The west would like to deny this, because without this infrastructure world trade will need to happen around the bottle necks through the waterways that America can control. If trade can flow throughout Eurasia by avoiding these bottlenecks, then there is nothing America can do. Even 2nd rate militaries can sink our entire fleet (except for subs) if our navy gets too close to land.

So, the only country that needs to physically hold the heartland is America itself. And that is in order to deny the infrastructure from being built. But there is no way America can do this with soft power, hard power, or a combination of the two. There are so many different countries we would have to control with such different cultures, that we could not possibly accomplish this. I mean just look at how hard it is to hold Afganistan. If we did manage to control some of the countries, all it would take would be going around the unfriendly countries to connect Eurasia.

Here is the thing though, if we want to dominate the world we do probably need to control the heartland; but only at a tremendous cost to America and Americans. If we do not control the heartland it does not mean we will be poor and will be pushed around. It just means we will have to give up our empire. So to all the people here thinking about ways to try and stop this integration from happening, I say why be bothered by it. Zbig is so vested in this because he is an aristocrat and would benefit a lot by denying Eurasia. The average American? Not so much.

This is an erudite essay, but its wrong in its analysis on several grounds:

1. Starting approvingly with MacKinder is strange on historical grounds. The empires that controlled a whole bunch of territory in Eurasia, the various Mongol and Jurchen empires and of course Russia, all wound up controlling a whole bunch of territory in Eurasia. They have never come close to being able to leverage this to control any part of the “periphery”. And Central Asia itself has never been particularly valuable except maybe as a means of getting someplace else more importance, its strategic importance has consistently been overrated since the days of Alexander the Great. Once MacKinder publish his theories, the Germans and the Japanese really tried hard to apply them to their grand strategy, with results that were disastrous.

2. Historically, the Chinese elites have prioritized control of China itself, and areas bordering China, which are enough. Its usually been the most advanced part of the civilized world or close enough to it, and contains a huge chunk of the world’s population. The area is self sufficient (except crucially in oil, I did a search and there is no mention of oil in this strategic analysis) and there is no real need to go out and control other parts of the world. And really great powers with strong ideologies that try to control the globe is a twentieth century phenomenon. The US has some interests in East Asia, notably Taiwan with its semiconductor industry, and Japan and Korea for historical reasons, so there is some need to keep an eye on China, but alot less than these sorts of essays indicate.

3. And really for that matter, there is no need for America to be the base of a globe dominating empire. Just keeping other great powers out of the Western Hemisphere, and coming to terms with the only two other potential Western Hemisphere based powers, Mexico and Brazil, was enough to make the US the dominant world power by 1917, enough so that sending an expeditionary force to Europe for a few months was enough to turn the tide against Germany. The twentieth century ideological powers such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were another matter, but the only such power now is the United States itself.

4. This is one of those strategy pieces where its obvious the author has been spending too much time looking at maps. If a country wants to project power, its pretty clear that there are some key ingredients: internal cohesion, a knowledgeable and competent elite, a population/ agricultural/ industrial base of sufficient size (but no larger), a technological edge, and the lack of strong enemy neighboring countries. Geography is really distant to this, except that if you are surrounded by geographical barriers, as England was and both the US and China now mostly are (both are continental sized nations, with the US surrounded by oceans and China by high mountain ranges and deserts), that helps with the lack of enemy neighboring countries.

Once you start believing in economics being the primary motivation in human activity you start believing in the crap the US leadership is pushing. Once Chinese become “economic man” they will be just like everybody else and there will be no need to worry about the aims of the Chinese leadership.

But isn’t the real potential encirclement of the Chinese by countries such as Russia and India? I think the Chinese will not confront the US for fear of provoking an antiChina alliance. (Russia would love to be a partner with the US).

Washington’s dual-containment strategy on Russia and China has backed both countries into one another’s arms. And judging by India’s BRICS and AIIB memberships, as well as their large-scale Russian arms purchases, they may well decide to go neutral in this cold war, just as they did in the last one.

Well, that basically leaves us, Israel and the Euro-clown show!

[…] The Geopolitics of America’s Global Decline by Alfred McCoy for TomDispatch (via the Unz Review)   I disagree that China’s rise is a necessarily a problem for the United States, but this is an excellent article. […]

True: Eurasia is a bigger prize than the rest of the world put together.

False: control of the ‘pivot area’ confers control of Eurasia. It does not. There is nothing there. Russia east of the Urals is mostly permafront, tundra and forest. Central Asia is an arid backwater, fragmented and surrounded by chokepoints. Successive empires – the heirs of Alexander, Tang China, Tsarist Russia – have subdued it and progressed no further to the far side of the Old World.

Control of the Indian Ocean conferred instant empire on marginal Portugal and its successors, and is still the key today. You do not mention China’s ‘string of pearls’ strategy in the Indian Ocean and its increasing involvement in Africa. That if anything is what to watch.

People are seeing that the TPP and related secret forays represent merely the latest chapter in a type of China panic that has been playing out in Washington.

The 1972 opening of China was followed by our best and brightest bringing about a subsequent essentially costless transfer of American patrimony via manufacturing know-how, software, security and numerous other knowledge capital items. They brought China into the modern economy but didn’t think through how it might work out, given that they don’t play by our rules.

Obama is merely the latest among the callow political class to have been swept up in the short-term thinking machine, and now will face another blot on his ‘legacy’. Community organizer Manchurian candidates don’t do the populace any more good than knee-jerk anti-Clinton candidates like W.

There is a US systemic defect that discourages longer-term approaches, and that is only exacerbated by lobbyist legislation and court decisions like Citizens United and similar self-enrichment devices for those that are selling out their country for a mess of pottage.

anywhere in the 5,000 words did the author mention China printing $25,000,0000,0000,000 since 2008 or, as is always the case in most China supremacy and US decline articles, it was just ignored?

and never mind the peg to the $ which allows this to apparently go unnoticed.

“America took the same trillion China spent on these world-altering projects and pissed it away fighting jihadist peasants and securing dirt roads in Afghanistan.
A big thank you to Obama, Bush, Clinton, and all the others in Washington who helped run this country into the ground.”

IOW, the US did what Israel and it’s supremacist Jews demanded.

Seriously…what the fuck are you talking about? The Kenyan Foriegner administration started the War in the Ukraine. Nuland…Powers…Rice…should get War Criminal treatment.

In general I agree, but the devil would be in the details. Would you just let Russia have its way with Ukraine?

Great article, by the way.

Do not forget that the Bravest Decider helped certain people to profit colossally on the war projects.

When the country is governed by plutocracy that forfeit meritocracy, then the incompetence strikes along all fronts.

Brilliant!

Accord the Russians and Chinese the spheres of influence they deserve and stop trying to rule the whole world. Get an anti-jihad partnership running with Russia, China, India, and Iran to check the rampaging Sunnis.

One can only wish…

America took the same trillion China spent on these world-altering projects and pissed it away fighting jihadist peasants and securing dirt roads in Afghanistan.

A big thank you to Obama, Bush, Clinton, and all the others in Washington who helped run this country into the ground.

Mackinder in his “Democratic Ideals and Reality” speaks openly that in the end it is human, who defines history, not merely geopolitics. Geopolitical prism is just a tool in viewing one of the facets of the world. WW II changed a lot and this change is what being ignored by many geopolitical scholars. After all, Mackinder “predicted” that GB, USA and Chine “will lead the way”, he didn’t elaborate where to;-)

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China’s leadership sees this institution as a future regional and, in the end, Eurasian alternative to the U.S.-dominated World Bank. So far, despite pressure from Washington not to join, 14 key countries, including close U.S. allies like Germany, Great Britain, Australia, and South Korea, have signed on

That really got the US’s attention, and they publically complained about Britain joining.

In a decade or two, should the need arise, China will be ready to surgically slice through Washington’s continental encirclement at a few strategic points without having to confront the full global might of the U.S. military, potentially rendering the vast American armada of carriers, cruisers, drones, fighters, and submarines redundant

Interesting and new to me. But isn’t the real potential encirclement of the Chinese by countries such as Russia and India? I think the Chinese will not confront the US for fear of provoking an antiChina alliance. (Russia would love to be a partner with the US).

My bet is the US will be kept happy for another generation, until the time China will have turned into Giant Hong Kong, a mega state that will be too powerful for the US or anyone else to constrain.

I was pleasantly surprised reading this article. To find so much erudition and clear thinking in anything printed in the American Imperial media today is breath taking. Right now the soi disant Americans are running around talking and opining on an insignificance of the so called Kaitlyn whatever or they spend countless hours mastering the art of the inflatable football. To find an article that is researched so well and makes so much sense in the present day world situation is outstanding. It makes the American billion dollar Foreign policy of the present Obama/Biden regime appear to be something children make up on the play ground. Kerry, the idiot, Biden the idiot, Hilary the lying idiot, Obama the street thug are the leaders that the brainless American populace have chosen. O tempora! O mores!

“my one and only question: is there anything the usa can do to stop this?”

No. Too many stupid people in the USA.

I looked through the list of events of 1602, and the only possible candidate seems to be the founding of the Dutch East India company.

Also, John the navigator? Do you mean Henry the navigator?

Our scummy White Elites since the early 1970s have implemented a policy of systematically destroying a Native Born White American Engineering-Tech-Medical Workforce by importing Chinese Legal Immigrant Scab Workers. Thousands of years of Native Born White American Engineering-Tech-Scientific-Medical experience will be lost forever…The new Chinese Overlords in post-White “US” will make certain that this is a permanent state of affairs.

The scale of the Treason is monumental….And its driven by enormous White Male Mega-CEO Greed…The White Liberal Mega-CEO Greedy Cheating Class.

I wondered the same. John the Navigator and Columbus came a bit before that. But they were not military endeavors, but strictly commercial.

Blaming the failure in Iraq on Iran and Syria is like blaming Kissinger for Watergate .

I haven’t finished the article yet but my respect for it jumped through the roof when I saw Mackinder mentioned (30 times actually, good job!)

Why do you choose 1602 as the start of the age of sea power?

Looks like the NSC neocons are biding time, treading water – except that the worst of them seem to be filled with passionate intensity … while the best appear, of course, to lack all conviction.

Maybe it’s like when Kennedy locked USA into a holding pattern on Cuba, having granted Miami Cubans leave to do their durndest – but stopping short of providing or promising air support for any actual invasion run. Maybe the Eurocentric Ukraine-connected neocons have managed to put themselves into a policy as carved in stone as the policy of the old China lobby of the old KMT days or as unchangeable as the political standoff that even today prevents USA from taking up Vietnam on its offer to go partners with the US Navy in a real ‘pivot-to-Asia’ containment policy for the PRC. Maybe we have turned over the NSC to people who have built themselves into, and who perpetuate, the erstwhile neocon ‘anti-Communist’ delusional system – people who are as powerful as, or more powerful, in terms of USA domestic politics than the anti-Castro neocons that have long been committed to the dream of overthrowing the Castro government. Why not? Wouldn’t that fit in nicely with the dysfunctional government of the USA in the 21st Century?

We seem to be a nation that talks a good game, but cannot act consistently in any kind of credible ‘global security’ policy … not unlike Great Britain or France in their decades of decline before World War II.

Obama? He has been so undercut by the polarized domestic politics of the current decade, he has no ability to do anything more than hold on and try to look good like Jackie Chan in one of his comedies, catlike, smiling as he miraculously lands repeatedly on his feet, maximally hoping to eke out a peace-keeping arrangement with Iran, but not able to take the steps necessary to lend any such arrangement credible in the least. What really are his options?

And we the people … what could/would/should we do? USA has too long been a province of a global capitalist empire …wouldn’t it be fine to be a NATION ONCE AGAIN!

Holyshit! that was a great read. unz never fails to deliver great articles

my one and only question: is there anything the usa can do to stop this?

I know war is out of the question, you don’t go to war with a nuclear power. the posturing in the south china sea is stupid beyond belief.

Phenomenal article!

Really shows how incompetent our leaders are compared to China and Russia.

Excellent summation of the state of the geopolitical world.

China has a very long view of history, Cleverly and carefully planned the Silk Belts and Roads and Maritime Silk Road developments, and has the wealth to make it happen.

Infrastructure construction is the bedrock of Eurasian development.
All the energy (gas, oil and nuclear for electrical) come from the sources in Russia, Central Asia and Iran.

And finally, security is from the powerful military of Russian and China and the SCO which now will include all major Eurasian nations (India, Pakistan and Iran).

Our elite remind me a little of that old example of tunnel vision thinking. It goes something along the line of; if you could somehow ask a Tyrannosaurus Rex what are the most important characteristics that define a superior creature that will rule the future earth, it would never occur to it that the secret is big brains and opposable thumbs. It would tell you that having the biggest teeth and most powerful jaws are what counts.
Washington/Wall Street think the Chinese are simply too short on big teeth.

Guess what the Poles and some Ukrainians adopted Catholicism of their own accord, rather than Orthodoxy, even as the Poles especially were fighting the Germans, and the Poles and Ukrainians each other later on. They even appealed to the pope against the Teutonic knights etc. The Poles have always gone their own way deliberately, no one has ‘perverted’ them, and they will never abandon their way for Orthodoxy, which btw has also produced enough ‘neuroticism’ of its own, especially in Serbia.

Interesting, but fallacious to equate European and Romano-German, even if you include the Greeks in the Romano part. European means Orthodox and Slav also, as well as Ugro-Finnic, Balt, etc. And certainly the Greek role is indispensable, so how can Russia be considered at odds with all that? Perhaps “Anglo-Saxon” is what was really meant, underneath, but even then, the opposition is not so clear cut, culturally there is much in common, it’s political aims that often differ, and are given a cultural veneer to justify it. And, Russia too has acted in a way labelled critically here as “European” or “Romano-German”, eg in its eastward colonial expansion that resulted in Russsia’s current extent.

Again, a flawed critique based on too one-sided and self-justificatory approach, even if with certain grains of truth in the mix.

@Toyrasus – your poor language skills and clubbing ‘Chinese news’ together with credible sites like this tells me you are one of those ‘Young Hans’ polluting comment sites with your Government propaganda.

You have a point. China will replace US ,Chinese language will replace English and India Pakistan and Bangladesh will keep on referring to the past to destroy the future as before and happily will regale themselves with the noises of how China has been appreciating the culture,talents,cuisine,and the histories of the subcontinent .At the same time ,they will keep on denouncing each other

“Last week, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld visited Moscow. In 2003, he famously threatened Europe with nuclear destruction (the “Samson Option”), saying “Israel has the capability to take the world down with us, and that will happen before Israel goes under”. Now he has explained to Russians Israel’s new policy: While the US enters the period of its decline, Israel must diversify and hedge its bets by drawing close to Moscow, Beijing and Delhi, he wrote in Izvestia daily. Perhaps, but without going too far. A flirt – yes, switching sides – not yet.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/13/the-fateful-triangle/

Israel will gravitate .to the new axix

Not only India has youth educated in English, which “grew up reading the western propaganda and dreaming the western dreams”. It is the same in Russia and China, and probably Brazil and South Africa. They may love the West, but their job will be in the new Eurasian Powerhouse, whilst the West will be reduced to selling tourism and a bit of “glamour of the old West”. I cannot imagine any way that the US could sabotage the development of the new Powerhouse, except through a suicidal full nuclear war on Russia and China. But, as Pepe says, Russia has got the US measurements, it has experience in dealing with it and has the weapons necessary. It is very logical that the US attacked Russia first, through Ukraine, because removing the economically weaker Russia would instantly remove the key link in the whole Powerhouse and disconnect China from Europe via land.

I expect that the wake-up call to the US Empire will come in the form of Germany switching sides, with the Frau or without the Frau ruling from Berlin. So far, the Frau has been a staunch US ally, but the German business is not happy. Germany could switch to resolving the Ukraine conflict (through federalisation of Ukraine that Russia has been proposing since the coup), which the US is resisting. Germany joining the EuroAsian Union would be the single biggest upset in 2015. But Germans are very conservative and they will wait for a clear sign that the EuroAsian Union is winning and the US is losing before they switch sides, which may take a few more years.