Interesante (aunque discutible en algún punto) nota de Mikhail Khazin reproducida ayer en el blog The Vineyard of the Saker. Por qué el Imperio ya no puede parar, y el papel de Rusia en la seguridad global. La traducción (del ruso al inglés) es pobre, pero es lo que hay, y se agradece igual.
Título: Why America Can't Stop
Subtítulo: Or an attempt to describe how US problems correlate with international security.
Texto: On several past occasions I have written that the United States is deliberately destroying the entire system of international security, the same system that they had built together with the USSR. Why did they start dismantling the international security system is also understandable, in the 1990s the generation of “victors” came to power in that country, these people are convinced that they had “defeated” the USSR (as our theory explains it is obviously not so, please refer to http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/188291 ) and because they are “victors” they may do anything they please. They decided that collective security arrangements are onerous, and that they need their own security system, the one that only they will have control over.
If we were to evaluate rhetoric of individuals who were in charge of the states that were admitted as new NATO members in the last 20 years, then we can figure out the logic that stands behind the expansion (and perhaps a bit even farther still). “We are being threatened and the USA is our only possible protection, therefore we must all be integrated within a US-centered security structure.” This was all going on while Russia, as a matter of principle, was not participating in affairs of those countries (not even in those of the Ukraine, which was abandoned to its own devices, something that has to a great extent caused the recent events in that country), Russia was not a threat to anyone (and of course it is not a threat to anyone now), the point of this all was deliberate destruction of the old global security system, in which Russia used to play a key role.
Obviously constructing a new security system from scratch is an endeavor that is both expensive and slow, and that is the prime reason why on some issues (such as nuclear disarmament) the United States continued to talk with Russia although the background of those communications can be best expressed through a formula: we only talk about questions which we consider to be of interest to us, and the rest is not really your business. The trouble is that all those plans, which were developed in the 90s and which they began to implement during 2000s (quite possibly, the events of September 11, 2001 [http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/86502] were organized to launch the execution of those plans, same way as the Pearl Harbor was staged to extract the United States from its “embrace of isolationism”), so those plans had been based on the premise of continuous economic growth, itself founded upon the primacy of America's resources. Instead they ended up with a crisis, which has significantly reduced those available “resources.”
I must note that the period of capture of former Socialist Commonwealth's markets has indeed become “the golden age” of American economy, even their budget scored a surplus. But our work in 2001 in which we evaluated the balance between different branches of American economy in the 1998 showed that ( http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/73174 ) already then the US economy was standing on the brink of abyss comparable to where it found itself in the early 1930s. Today's picture is far more frightening and what can be done about it unclear as well. The old security model has been destroyed. Trust cannot be restored, a new model does not exist, there are some elements of it here and there, but they function only if the US directly intervenes into the process. Intervention factually consists of allocating large sums of money to all participants in the process, and it is faulty: Palestine, ISIS, etc.
This is happening while the situation inside the US worsens. The problem is that for a long time they have a barrier in place that has separated the elite from the rest of the society, the barrier of the kind that's only being built here (in Russia). American educational system, and I mean educational system that prepares societal leaders, has been destroyed already back in the 1960s, an average citizen (the sheep in the parlance of the elite) has actually no chances of advancement to an upper “elite” level, the one from which the society is being governed. A successful marriage could serve as a theoretical exception, but this social advancement mechanism cannot be employed in a systemic fashion. However for those few who are born active, unless the punitive psychiatry destroys them at a tender age or they fall victim to juvenile justice, something that now gets written a lot about, for them there are still mechanisms for upward social mobility which could bring them up to the level of technocratic elite.
The trouble is that in the course of this half of a century they've had accumulated lots of people who are absolutely unprepared to tolerate a sharp decline in their standards of living. But along with the worsening of the economic crisis, in order to maintain their grip on power and their status the “actual” elites must most definitely reduce the living standard of these population strata of the American society. And that can push the system up onto the critical level of mutual contradictions. Because internal resources necessary for maintenance of the quality of life of this so called upper middle class are depleted, they need to find some substitute external resources. To phrase it differently: the United States can only preserve domestic social stability at the expense of someone else.
Here we stumble upon remnants of the old security system. The Bretton Woods system was based upon a premise that all assets of participating member states will be dollar denominated. So fresh dollars were printed along with introduction of new assets into the system, and the US elites could then work out how those dollars are to be shared with the elites of those new countries (or regions) that were about to be incorporated within this dollar zone. How those regional elites were going to split those dollars with their own population was their own concern. But there are no more assets to be brought into the system, consequently no new dollars are being printed, and worse than that, existing dollars are being redistributed for America's benefit through US controlled world dollar system. This makes internal conflicts in many of the world's countries all but unavoidable.
Some of those conflicts are at their beginning stage while others are already burning hot, but their essence is all he same, counter-elites, the ones who were not let into the proverbial dollar cookie jar now make claims upon existing elites demanding either to restore the scale of support they get (that means that the old elites must commence financing of the economy from their own pockets) or yield power and get out of the way. Most obvious that because those existing elites are all pro-American, the scenario is developing under accompaniment of increasingly anti-American rhetoric.
We would like to remind you that similar processes already took place in Latin America after the investment flows from the United States changed their direction in aftermath of the Second World War. There the finale was either a breakdown of the economy or emergence of new forces at the helm of the state, frequently personified by brutal dictators, and sometimes, like in Chile, both a combination of both developments. What is going to happen to the world's regions is an open question, but the choice of means to control the situation which remains at America’s disposal is shrinking dramatically.
The United States are obviously witnessing these processes and are impotent to do anything about them. From that standpoints, Obama's officials are no different from Putin, he might not like Nabiullina's policies but he cannot just fire her because giving her the boot would destroy the consensus of the elites (and he's too hesitant as doesn't venture to reign in the elites), likewise the administration team in the US is unable to go against their elites, which adamantly refuse considering anything that might somehow threaten their status. And that in turn means that rocking the boat is forbidden!
That can be defined as: sudden moves that can be interpreted as a game changer which in turn might alter the very rules that the United States has introduced in the decade of 2000 and such moves are not allowed. For example, you cannot just change borders. Possibly, if the United States could turn the clock back, then they might have left the Pandora's box safely closed and would not have amputated Kosovo from Serbia, but what's done is done, besides that all happened during prosperous 90s. But to permit the phenomenon of Crimea (or anything similar) is just impermissible. Because if we allow to change borders on a regional level, then entire Eastern Europe, the Middle East and many other areas will turn into serious war theaters.
Essentially we are the ones who understand that this is unavoidable, but American elites will never come to grips with that (and that's why our economic theory is something they would never agree with), this why they will do whatever it takes to postpone their own end, they'll drag it until the whole structure collapses upon them on its own. In that sense, it is implausible to expect that they would remove sanctions or that they will somehow agree to us acting independently. Perhaps they would be happy to but they are prisoners of their own system.
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