Geopolitical Outlook

Since the United States entered into the Second World War considerably late, it did not suffer as much damage or casualties as other countries had. It also helped that its geographical location kept its cities from suffering the infrastructural damage seen across cities in Europe and Asia. This, in part, helped the American Empire to replace the British Empire (although Britain is still an imperial power) as the global hegemon, especially when the American economy took less time to recover in comparison. And so began the all-conquering march of the U.S. Dollar, undoubtedly the American Empire’s most powerful expression of its global domination and global monopoly. As per requirements during WWII, most of Europe under a war economy had to import its consumer goods. The United States, which had yet to enter into the War, was readily available to trade consumer goods with Europe for gold; and it had done the same in the First World War, to which it was also a latecomer. In other word

Left to right: Juvénal Habyarimana (Republic of Rwanda) and Slobodan Milošević (Yugoslavia and Serbia); photos taken some time during the 1980's.  “What would happen if capitalism succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries. The working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.” [1]  —J.V. Stalin, 1926  Such are the prophetic words of Joseph Stalin; and indeed, that is what happened throughout much of the 1990's after the demise of the Soviet Union: a series of U.S. imperial aggressions which went unchecked, with little to no challenge, and with increasing brute force. The CIA-backed Mujahideen succeeded in overthrowing the progressive, Soviet-aligned People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan in 1992, which not only caused Afghanistan's living standards to drop rapidly and made the countr

While Zbigniew Brzezinski was the mastermind behind many of the United States' foreign-meddling and regime-change projects, George Soros played the role of bankroller . Who is George Soros? George Soros is a liberal, anti-communist, hedge fund billionnaire who helped to finance CIA operations during the 1980's to bring down Soviet-aligned governments, particular those in Eastern Europe. Along with Brzezinski, he provided support for colour revolutions and proxy forces in the efforts to destabilize countries that openly defied U.S. imperialism. His targets for U.S.-led regime change projects and NATO control included: East Germany, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. He is also a trustee and a major source of funding for the Council on Foreign Relations (of which Brzezinski was also a Council member), a private organization through which Wall Street's foreign policy preferences  and interests are relayed to Washington. In other words, it is Wall Street's think tank. It

[Note: Below is a brief excerpt from a section of my upcoming essay that has yet to be published.] After the fall of Kabul in 1992, but some time before the Taliban came to power, the reactionary tribal chiefs had taken over the Afghan countryside and ordered farmers to begin planting opium poppy, which had been outlawed by the Taraki government. Prior to that, the Pakistani ISI set up hundreds of heroin laboratories at the behest of the CIA so that by 1981, the Pakistani-Afghan border became the largest producer of heroin in the world. It is then apparent that by putting an end to the cultivation of opium poppy, in addition to using the country’s resources to modernize and uplift its own population, the independent nationalist government of the PDPA (People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan) was seen as a threat to U.S. interests that needed to be eliminated [1]. After all, it was during the 1970’s that drug trafficking  served as the CIA’s primary source of funding for param

A key figure in the history of U.S. foreign policy is the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist who served as former President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981. He was a highly influential figure in the Council on Foreign Relations. Although he was not the National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan's presidency, he still continued to play a prominent role in enforcing U.S. foreign policy's goals in upholding Washington's global monopoly. His strategy in carrying out U.S. foreign policy consisted of using the CIA to destabilize and force regime-change onto countries whose governments actively resisted against Washington. One particular target was the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan , which was then under the progressive, anti-imperialist, and Soviet-allied government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). Brzezinski was the architect behind the Mujahideen , which was compris

An oft-misunderstood subject matter that has been made cheap fodder for imperialist and anti-Soviet propaganda is the Berlin Wall, which stood from 1961 to 1989. One of the most common misconceptions -- or rather, widespread myths -- is that West Germany was in need of protection, re-arming, and was the "victim" of "East German and Soviet aggression," and that the wall was supposedly a symbol of "communist oppression" and proof of a " totalitarian Iron Curtain". In reality, the wall was built for the defense, security, and protection of the independent East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, or GDR) from the threats coming from West Germany, who were essentially NATO proxy forces and were led by a Western-backed puppet government. There were also fears coming from the GDR of a return or resurgence of Fascism. As was already mentioned in my previous blog entry, " NATO, a Brief History ," the political partitioning of Germany w

Following the April 1949 signing of the Atlantic Pact and led by then-U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded by 12 member states in London on May 18th, 1950 . Their purpose, as they claimed, was their dedication to "the preservation of peace" and to the defense of Western Europe against supposed military threats. Not only did the creation coincide with the heightened tensions of the Cold War and the political partitioning of Germany, but it also extended its invitation to West Germany to join the fold on May 9th, 1954 with the intent of re-arming it. This was a violation of the 1945 Potsdam agreement which posited that the partition of Germany was supposed to be temporary and that all of Germany was to be ' de-Nazified '; instead, we saw the development of West Germany into a Western puppet state. The Soviet Union saw the aforementioned invitation to West Germany and its re-arming as a provocation and, in th

Toronto-based international criminal lawyer and long-time critic of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Christopher Black, recently published a paper titled, " Marx and International Law - A Perspective ," which is now available online on his blog. The paper provides insights on global capital, discussing how international law for capital means the mechanisms used to "solidify and codify" imperialism, and how law affects class relations on a global scale. In it, he states: "This class tension both within states and between states is essential to understand in order to understand the real nature of international law," and that the issue then becomes what to do about the global dominating military power that is Washington. And indeed, the UN has been used by Washington "in violation of the central precepts of the UN Charter," particularly against nations that are targets of U.S. foreign policy and refuse to allow U.S. international capital