{"id":36926,"date":"2018-08-22T18:31:29","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T23:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36926"},"modified":"2018-08-22T18:31:29","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T23:31:29","slug":"the-suicidal-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36926","title":{"rendered":"The Suicidal Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Suicidal Empire<\/a><\/h3>\n
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There are a lot of behaviors being exhibited by those in positions of power in the US that seem disparate and odd. We watch Trump who is imposing sanctions on country after country, dreaming of eradicating his country\u2019s structural trade deficit with the rest of the world. We watch pretty much all of US Congress falling over each other in their attempt to impose the harshest possible sanctions on Russia. People in Turkey, a key NATO country, are literally burning US dollars and smashing iPhones in a fit of pique. Confronted with a new suite of Russian and Chinese weapons systems that largely neutralize the ability of the US to dominate the world militarily, the US is setting new records in the size of its already outrageously bloated yet manifestly ineffectual defense spending. As a backdrop to this military contractor feeding frenzy, the Taliban are making steady gains in Afghanistan, now control over half the territory, and are getting ready to stamp \u201cnull and void,\u201d in a repeat of Vietnam, on America\u2019s longest war. A lengthening list of countries are set to ignore or compensate for US sanctions, especially sanctions against Iranian oil exports. In a signal moment, Russia\u2019s finance minister has recently pronounced the US dollar \u201cunreliable.\u201d Meanwhile, US debt keeps galloping upwards, with its largest buyer being reported as a mysterious, possibly entirely nonexistent \u201cOther.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

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Although these may seem like manifestations of many different trends in the world, I believe that a case can be made that these are all one thing: the US\u2014the world\u2019s imperial overlord\u2014standing on a ledge and threatening to jump, while its imperial vassals\u2014too many to mention\u2014are standing down below and shouting \u201cPlease, don\u2019t jump!\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Suicidal Empire There are a lot of behaviors being exhibited by those in positions of power in the US that seem disparate and odd. We watch Trump who is imposing sanctions on country after country, dreaming of eradicating his country\u2019s structural trade deficit with the rest of the world. We watch pretty much all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[130,8773,4995,7844,259,553,694,21351,818,827],"class_list":["post-36926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-china","tag-club-orlov","tag-dimitry-orlov","tag-donald-trump","tag-empire","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-suicidal-empire","tag-turkey","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36927,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36926\/revisions\/36927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}