In oktober 2022 verklaarde Ursula von der Leyen, voorzitter van de Europese Commissie, namens de bellicose EU:
I welcome the strong stance Japan has taken on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Like the EU, Japan understands what is at stake here. Not just Ukraine’s future. Not just Europe’s future. But the future of a rules-based world order…
Russia's failure (in Oekraïne. svh) alone will not save the rules-based global order. Because the Kremlin's revisionism is not the only nor the most serious threat to the rules-based order. The so-called no-limits partnership declared by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping is also a clear challenge to the post-war order, built on the core values of the UN Charter… We need all continents to rise up in defence of the rules-based order.
De politiek ondergeschikte rol van Europa op het geopolitieke schaakbord en de nauwe samenwerking met ondermeer de Apartheidsstaat Israel, demonstreren hoe absurd de geclaimde ambities van Europa zijn. De agressieve buitenlandse politiek van Washington, dat 93 procent van zijn bestaan in oorlog is geweest met als recente dieptepunten de illegale inval in Irak, Afghanistan, Libië en Syrië, waar de VS de Syrische oliebronnen in beslag heeft genomen, tonen juist aan hoe weinig de VS, en in zijn voetspoor de Europese NAVO-landen, zich aantrekken van de op ‘regels-gebaseerde wereldorde.’ Hoewel de westerse propaganda als zoete koek wordt geslikt door de westerse mainstream-pers, blijven deze praatjes door serieuze westerse commentatoren en door de rest van de wereld kritisch geanalyseerd. Zo schreef de in Beijing gestationeerde journalist Daniel Alan Bey in de Asia Times:
Since taking office, Biden has overseen sanctions on Chinese officials, blacklisted and targeted Chinese tech companies, significantly ramped up diplomatic pressures on Beijing and increased military maneuverers off the coast of China.
The trade tariffs imposed during the Trump years remain in place, while military spending is up, with a record $777.7 billion defense bill recently passed by Congress. AUKUS, a new military pact comprising the US, the United Kingdom and Australia, risks unleashing a nuclear arms race in the Asia-Pacific region.
As Washington coordinates with its allies in the Group of Seven (zeven vooraanstaande industriële staten, Canada, Duitsland, Frankrijk, Italië, Japan, het Verenigd Koninkrijk en de Verenigde Staten. svh), efforts have intensified to rally a broader anti-China front. These actions are framed through a binary democracy-versus-authoritarianism logic and the myth of a rules-based international order. The recent Summit for Democracy is a case in point.
But when US politicians talk of a rules-based order, what they actually mean is an international order led by the United States. And while policy wonks and analysts based in the American capital talk of ‘values,’ these tend to obfuscate the harsh logic of ‘interests’ and the brute threat of economic and extra-economic force.
This simple but elementary feature of the world system, backed up by events in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere over the past couple of decades alone, is perpetually ignored by liberal elites who uncritically absorb and reproduce this worldview.
By framing the 21st century as one in which democracies are pitted in a life-and-death struggle against authoritarian political systems, their pretensions mask the underlying logics of global power.
Belief in a rules-based order is precisely that: a belief and an act of faith, a leap of the imagination into a cartoonish realm that has not only never existed, but whose idealism conceals what some call the ‘darker side of Western modernity.’
At its core, it is fundamentally quasi-religious: a nice story we tell ourselves to cloak the terror of the geo-historical record.
https://asiatimes.com/2022/02/us-rules-based-order-is-a-myth-and-china-knows-it/
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
Smedley Butler ‘participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I,’ en ‘published a short book with the now-famous title War Is a Racket, for which he is best-known today. Butler opened the book with these words:
‘War is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.’
Von der Leyen pleit voor oorlog in allereerst Europa.
Butler went on to describe who bears the costs of war — the men who die or return home with wrecked lives, and the taxpayers — and who profits — the companies that sell goods and services to the military. (The term ‘military-industrial complex’ would not gain prominence until 1961, when Dwight Eisenhower used it in his presidential farewell address. See Nick Turse’s book The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.)
Writing in the mid-1930s, Butler foresaw a U.S. war with Japan to protect trade with China and investments in the Philippines, and declared that it would make no sense to the average American:
‘We would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war — a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.
Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit — fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well...
But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people — who do not profit.’
Butler detailed the huge profits of companies that sold goods to the government during past wars and interventions and the banks that made money handling the government’s bonds.
‘The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits — ah! that is another matter — twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred percent — the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.
Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in wartime. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,” but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket — and are safely pocketed.
And who provides these returns? “We all pay them — in taxation.… But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.”'
His description of conditions at veterans’ hospitals reminded me of what we’re hearing today about the dilapidated veterans’ healthcare system. Butler expressed his outrage at how members of the armed forces are essentially tricked into going to war — at a pitiful wage.
Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the ‘war to end all wars.’ This was the ‘war to make the world safe for democracy.’ No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a ‘glorious adventure.’
Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40954.htm
Deze werkelijkheid staat in schril contract met de oorlogspropaganda van mijn oude vrienden Derk Sauer en Geert Mak, beide multimiljonair en beide voormalig links. Sauer was zelfs een overtuigde marxist-leninist. Mijn generatie is de schaamte voorbij. Indien er een oorlog met Azië uitbreekt dan weet u wie u verantwoordelijk kunt stellen.
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