Coping With Slipping Hegemony

We’ll be going to vote in an hour or so—we’re hoping that, with the heavy early voting, my wife won’t have to stand over long. Then on to therapy. However, I wanted to get this brief partial transcript published, because it bears upon the big issues facing America—which somehow don’t get discussed by our representatives.

The transcript is from Alastair Crooke’s most recent chat with Judge Nap. As usual, the title doesn’t cover the wide range of topics discussed. For our purposes, I’d like to highlight topics that we’ve covered here recently, to give an idea of how a former insider like Crooke sees things in geopolitics. Prime among those topics are the ways in which the Anglo-Zionist establishment is attempting to cope and gaslight regarding what Crooke terms “slipping hegemony.” Coping for their own ideological positions, gaslighting the American public. That includes slipping technological edges, slipping value for military hardware for money spent, the Pentagon’s obvious desire to avoid war in the Middle East while somehow saving face, and the Rand report on the National Defense Strategy. All topics we’ve touched on within the last few weeks.

Here we go. We start with an assessment of Israeli mendacity, a topic on which Crooke has first hand knowledge—and a warning about Anglo-Zionist cope/gaslighting. Crooke’s unspoken point here is that the Israelis and their Lobby control much of the information (dis- and mis-) in DC, to the extent that career people in the Intel Community fear to speak the truth that they know.

Alastair Crooke : Netanyahu’s Imaginary Victories.

[12:46]

Judge: How does the West view Netanyahu's obvious deceptions, obvious lies? How do the elites in Europe view this?

Crooke: I used to talk to the CIA officer in Tel Aviv and, of course, he knew what was happening, but what could you [a person in the CIA officer’s position] say? Because these things [bogus Israeli "intel"] were going directly into the White House and being read there--and then you're going to say that this is intelligence is false? I had a personal experience of that when I was working for the EU, the the EU were given these intercepts of telephone conversations between the Palestinian Authority and a group that [the Israelis] described as a terrorist group. This was supposed to show collusion, and the whole thing [was a] fake. I mean, it was on the right paper and it looked [like], had all the [external] hallmarks of being a verbatim intelligence report of this [phone] call. [But it] never happened. Never happened.

Judge: Is there a general understanding that if Israel couldn't penetrate Iran's radar and defense systems then the United States can't penetrate it, and if that's the case, if that's the understanding, isn't Iran pretty much safe from a major attack by Israel and the US?

Crooke: Well, that's the whole point of this narrative that is produced [in the Anglo-=Zionist controlled media]. The Wall Street Journal said, 'Thank God, anyone [like Iran] who is dealing with Russian technology, they're on a slippery slope to a real hiding. Western technology, Western intelligence, is the gold standard for the future, and that's not going to change.' And you have the same thing appearing in the mouthpiece, The Economist, in London saying, 'This is the end of the Iranian regime.' Well none of it's true, but it's trying to create the right atmosphere in Washington so that Netanyahu can slowly drag Washington into this war.

In what follows, Crooke mirrors our own take regarding the Pentagon statement—it may have looked like a warning to Iran, but it may actually have been a warning to Israel. In other words, go ahead, Israel, and do your worst against Iran. You’ll be on your own this time.

What is quite striking, though, was a statement that came out, I think, from the Pentagon. I don't know if it was the Secretary of Defense, but at a senior level, and saying, 'If there is another attack on Israel by Iran you [Iran] will have to face the full wrath of Israel your self.' [I.e., the US won't 'restrain' Israel.] In other words, the United States doesn't want to get drawn into it. I think that is probably the view, because there will be people, of course, in the Pentagon that understand exactly what happened in Iran. They [the Pentagon] have satellites, they can see satellite photographs, they can check, they can fact check it exactly, they know what happened. But politically it might be convenient for some in the US to say, 'Yes, Iran's on the back foot, is about to collapse, and that's why we need to go and support Israel fully.'

[15:28]

In this next excerpt the subject of the Rand Corporation (Pentagon think tank) analysis of the 2022 National Defense Strategy looms large. The date of 2022 is important. That was the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation. Up to that point in time even the Pentagon may have been deluding itself about some big technological edge. Two years later, after the evidence of Ukraine, even the Pentago—through its Rand think tank—is admitting that that edge may simply be gone in key areas. Maybe not entirely, but enough that Rand frankly assessed that the US can’t afford to get into wars with major powers, because it could lose.

[21:48]

This is one of the tipping points that is taking place in the world. Not only are the militaries changing--air power against missile power, changing the warfare of the region--but also technology increasingly is not the preserve of the West any longer. It's as much the preserve of China and of Russia and Iran as it is of the West. We [in the West] find that very, very difficult to assimilate, and that was why it was a subject of a report that I mentioned to you by the Rand organization, which said, 'We might lose these wars if we take on the world, because we don't have the capacity any longer.'

I think it was showing up a key contradiction, because it's very hard to explain how they were could say that the West doesn't have suitable weapons systems [if its technology is so superior]--that it's not ready to fight wars, it certainly can't fight any war against any one of these people let alone collectively and if we tried to do that against one it could lose. I think it's going back to a basic contradiction in American and European societies. You may have seen that the British government nearly did fall two years ago because bond holders just wouldn't go on financing the deficit it in Britain. The same thing's happening in France. It's returned again to Britain, where the government can't finance its deficit, its borrowing requirements. In the United States, too, the cost of interest on the debt exceeds the entire defense budget, and I think possibly there we're seeing some push back against the neoconservative view that, 'Oh yes, we are the United States, we can take on China, Russia, Iran. Let them try, we can do that because we have the best military.'

Actually, the problem is that for 20 years the West has been pursuing what is called a soft fiscal posture, i.e., printing bonds, selling them to the central bank which monetizes them, prints money to finance our expenditure, our expenditure goes up and up and now we are reaching the point where the bond holders have to decide what are they [the governments] going to do? Are they [the governments] going to decline to pay on their bonds, are they going to default on their bonds, or are they going to cut expenditures and meet the dangers? There's a historian that is the favorite of hedge funds in Wall Street who's just said, 'Have you noticed? Actually, we the West--I mean France, Britain, the United States--we've become the Soviet Union!' The same problems, the despair, the sense of divisions within the Soviet Union before the reform. And he said, 'The main thing was that it was a very relaxed fiscal environment, so companies became less efficient, less capable, they just dragged on because the government would always bail them out, until it all collapsed.'

I'm just saying I think perhaps some people in the Pentagon are saying to the Neocons, 'You talk about American hegemony, as if it's the 60s and 70s, when all of Europe was in disarray, was broken by the war, and you were 50% of the global economy, and now you're only 15%. Neocons, wake up! We have to have a different policy because we are failing in every area of our defense capability.'

This is Rand [speaking]. For those that don't know, [Rand] is actually the NGO of the Pentagon. It's funded by the Pentagon, it always has reflected Pentagon policy. So what's going on? The NGO funded by the Pentagon, fabulously rich and filled with vast resources, predicts that the United States is unprepared for war. The United States military budget is $886 billion a year. The United States interest on its debt is now $1 trillion a year.

...

The hegemony is slipping, and it's visible that it's slipping. It's not down to zero, but that Rand report is saying, 'We have to really think very carefully about where we're going.' Of course, Rand suggests that really the answer is to spend more and more and more--16%, 17% of GDP--on defense, and to have all of government go onto a complete War footing--I mean an active War footing--in order to fight a possible global war. And they say, 'Isn't it obvious we are now having to face the idea that the United States is at war globally?' This is quite a dramatic statement coming out of the Pentagon's favorite research organization.

This is very much what the election is—or should be—about. People in DC probably understand much of this, certainly since Rand published its report. This is what the next administration faces, but could say publicly due to cope and gaslighting.