by Tom Luongo, Tom Luongo:
The old world broke this week. It was blown up cynically by someone who thought this would advance their agenda the most.
The act of vandalizing a major piece of physical infrastructure, targeting civilian populations, isn’t unprecedented in history, but it does signal that everything we thought we knew about the rules of the current game was wrong.
Well, for most people anyway.
When I spoke in June at the Ron Paul Institute Conference on Foreign Policy I described the game of geopolitics as a seven-player game of the ancient Chinese game, Go.
And in that game we’ve reached an inflection point where some factions are coalescing and others are splintering. The faction that is unwilling to compromise on their future is the most dangerous one at the table.
My conclusion then was that those ‘who think they are entitled to run the world’ will flip the game board.
They will change the rules of the game without remorse or a case in the world for those they harm and the aftereffects of their actions. In fact, the chaos they engender is preferable to them than losing.
We got the first inkling of this when the West didn’t just freeze Russia’s foreign exchange reserves but seized them.
Now undersea assets in international waters are fair game. The good news it that this flipping of the game board was only a couple of gas pipelines. The potential is still for something far more unthinkable, not that that’s off the table.
In the immediate aftermath of proof the pipelines were blown up everyone (including myself) came forward with their theory as to who did it. Sadly, I can construct arguments for nearly every major player in the game having done this.
But understand the significance of this act. Another redline in international commerce and relations was crossed. The burning question is by whom?
We can rule out the most idiotic takes, like the Russians blew up the pipelines themselves. Why blow up an asset which is literally your biggest piece of leverage on this particular game board when you can do what Putin has already done, shut off the taps?
The only people putting forth this idea are frothing neocons who never met a global problem they couldn’t blame on Putin. Their arguments simply confirm what we already knew, they are jumping for joy at the news.
Many are reflexively pointing to statements by Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland about getting rid of the Nordstream 2 pipeline before the war in Ukraine broke out. But, so what? Why wait seven months to make good on that threat? And why also take out Nordstream 1 at the same time?
The argument is based on this idea that the US is now a rogue state fully controlled by neocons who see their opportunity to get their geopolitcial two-fer, going to war with Russia while also regaining dominance over a vassal Europe.
Indeed this is the prevailing sentiment across the whole of the anti-US alternative media. From Pepe Escobar to Bernard at Moon of Alabama the rush to put together the motive (Escobar) and the means (MoA) is quite compelling.
I, however, do not agree.
And the reasons are many. But it starts with the basic premise is that it is too easy.
Sure, the neocons wanted NS1 and NS2 removed from the game board. Neocons staff the lion’s share of important positions in the “Biden” National Security Council, his State Dept. and the Dept. of Defense. But the neoconservative axis doesn’t stop at the mouth of the Potomac. Their roots are deep within British Intelligence, Whitehall, City of London and yes, even Germany.
When you invoke the term neocon it is a very specific term for a very specific faction of people. They are rapacious, unwilling to compromise, indefatigable and embedded like ticks all across the Western political and intelligence infrastructure.
They are also incredibly easy to manipulate because all you have to do is give them a green light for mayhem and they will take it like a pit bull seeing a squealing rabbit.
So while Bernard did a fine job of laying out all of the circumstantial ‘facts’ of this case, he didn’t make a conclusion either. He’ll leave that job to his partner in Anti-US Empire leftism Escobar and the imaginations of so many rightfully disillusioned with the US.
They and other have made the case and all that has to be done now is allow the amplifier of social media and global anxiety to run wild. Spoon feeding people cynicism today is easy. Hating on the US is now fashionable.
The groundwork for this has been laid for months with Europe shooting itself in the foot repeatedly while allowing its sympathetic chorus to try and portray them as the victim of US aggression.
Personally, I think that conclusion is nonsense and have stuck to my guns for months saying both the EU and ‘The US’ want this war with Russia but for different reasons. In other words, no one is a victim of the other’s aggression, they both want the same thing, a divorce and/or war with Eurasian integration but who gets to be the decision makers in the end is what they are fighting over internally.
I’ve laid this out in so many blog posts, but this one from January lays out all the arguments of the factions at play. While I was wrong about war in Ukraine being off the table, the interplay of the factions was still spot on.
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