Ya son varios los
analistas que vienen llamando la atención sobre la insostenibilidad del Imperio
y sus bravuconadas a mansalva. Ya no se salva nadie de las advertencias,
amenazas, improperios y demás para cualquier nación del planeta que no se
avenga a los deseos de los funcionarios estadounidenses. Falta poco para que el
portero del Empire State comience a imponer condiciones al resto del mundo. ¿No
será mucho, chicos? La nota que sigue es de Jeff Thomas para el sitioweb
InternationalMan.com:
Título: Making
The Same Mistakes Again (Remember The 'Lord Clive')
Texto: The image
above is of the 18th-century home of friends in Colonia, Uruguay. Today,
sitting on their back patio on the Rio de la Plata, I looked out at a small
yellow buoy in the harbour that marks the final resting place of the Lord
Clive, a large, 60-gun British warship from the 18th century.
In 1763, we
British, already at war with Spain, decided to expand the venture to the New
World. The Lord Clive arrived in Colonia, Uruguay, and began firing into the
tiny town. With her heavy contingent of cannon, her captain was confident that
he could do enough damage to make the Spanish inhabitants surrender. After
extensive bombardment, the Spanish had still not raised the white flag;
however, the crew of the Lord Clive had managed to set fire to their own ship.
The crew abandoned ship.
Local accounts of
the event have it that, swimming ashore, the English crew apologized for
bombarding the town and asked for mercy. Not surprisingly, the Spanish killed
them.
Of course, this
is not the outcome that’s described in English history books. Although the
defeat of the British on that day is acknowledged, the folly is not. Although
historians will generally acknowledge a defeat, they’re often reluctant to
mention any idiocy on the part of their own military. And so any
English-language version of the story tells a different tale from the account
above.
This is a great
pity, as much can be learned from historical idiocy. Since it’s rarely taught,
military leaders often make the same idiotic mistakes that their predecessors
made.
As an example, we
can look at the adventures of the US today and observe their serial invasions
over the last fifteen years in the Middle East and elsewhere. These adventures
are being pursued ostensibly “to make the world safe for democracy.” However,
whenever the US takes over a foreign country, it puts in place a puppet
government—not exactly the textbook definition of “democracy.”
And, of course,
warfare is very costly. Choosing to invade multiple countries at the same time,
as the US has been doing over the last fifteen years, is even more costly.
And the US
government never misses an opportunity to portray the Russians as evil
aggressors—an appellation far more suited to the US. On one occasion after
another, Russia has sought to tone down the level of aggression, whilst the US
has been conducting a shoving match with the Russians, goading them into
conflicts.
This is
extraordinarily foolish, as it would take very little to light the fuse of
direct warfare between the US and Russia. Over the centuries, quite a few
countries have challenged Russia, but Russia has always proven to be a very
hard country to defeat. Although American films about World War II tend to
portray the US as having won the war against the Germans, it was the Russians
who did the lion’s share of the job. Even when poorly armed and poorly
prepared, Russia simply throws another ten or twenty million men at the problem
and ultimately wears out any attacker. Russians don’t necessarily like war any
more than any other people, but they do have astonishing staying power. They’ll
grimly see a war through, long after their opponents have lost heart.
In addition,
China and others have stated their support for Russia, should the US get
carried away with its aggression in the Middle East. Both China and Russia have
stated that, should the US move on Iran, they will join the fray on Iran’s
side.
It would be
foolhardy in the extreme for the US government to assume that it could take
these powers on and come out of the fight victorious.
But what does
this have to do with the burning of the Lord Clive?
Well, as stated
above, the captain of the Lord Clive had a massive warship capable of doing a
great deal of damage as he bombarded houses, including the one pictured above.
But the crew became so caught up in their zeal for destruction that they failed
to extinguish a fire on board the ship and had to dive overboard, surrendering
to the Spanish, who by that time were understandably not feeling particularly
merciful.
The US is in a
similar situation. It’s not exactly in the best shape at home. The economy is
on the ropes, and a financial collapse may be imminent. The government is
rapidly becoming more autocratic, and a police state is likely to be instituted
in the near future. It will be needed as funds for entitlements dry up and
those who now praise the nanny state find that they’ve been lied to all this
time. Pension funds also are beginning to fail, and people in both the private
and public sectors will be more than a bit peevish when they discover that this
rug, too, has been pulled out from under them.
If we were to
imagine the worst possible future for the US, it might go something like this:
The US invades
Iran or directly attacks Russian forces in Syria or another country.
Russia retaliates
and the world takes up sides as World War III begins.
For the first
time in their history, the American people are angrier at their own government
than they are at the trumped-up enemy their government has chosen to oppose.
The US government
finds that it must fight a full-blown foreign war at a time when it’s fighting
a second one at home.
All of the above
takes place at a time when the US is broke and is economically unable to
sustain a fight on either front.
The world turns
against the US for causing this fiasco, and, for the first time, there’s no one
standing on the same side as the US.
The US effort collapses
and, like the crew of the Lord Clive, the US, in effect, abandons ship and asks
for forgiveness from those it has invaded.
In the above
scenario, we can imagine that the US would have created a situation that would
maximize enmity from the rest of the world. (In 1919, Europe forced the Treaty
of Versailles on Germany, not out of necessity, but out of vengeance. It served
to cripple the German people for decades thereafter—both socially and
economically.)
A final thought:
Every night on American television news programmes, pundits, politicians, and
retired generals perform their sabre rattling, stating that the world at large
had better cooperate with the US or else. Whilst this bravado may appeal to a
segment of the American population, the programming is also available to the
rest of the world. We who aren’t American and don’t reside in the US listen to
the threatening rhetoric and find it decidedly unsettling. More to the point,
the world’s leaders are also observing these programmes. They have a similar
tone to the Nazi buildup in the 1930s. To those outside the US, US leaders are
becoming increasingly dangerous.
If this does play
out along the lines of the sinking of the Lord Clive, it will be the American
people who will pay the price for their leaders’ reckless behaviour.
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