Michael Hudson’s latest piece, America has Just Destroyed a Great Empire, makes a number of interesting points. Unfortunately it suffers for having been written in Hudson’s trademark opaque style—he simply has issues with the English language. Still, it’s worth taking the time to work through it. For my part, I will—when necessary—edit the passages that I quote, for readability and clarity.
I know that Mark has quite a few readers in Europe. I wonder if you are hearing what I am hearing.
I'm an American who is spending the summer in the 'home country' in northern Europe...not too far from Russia...Well, 700 miles, but it seems close enough to some of my friends and relatives.
Of course I haven't been able to resist discussing the Ukraine situation. The one point I would add to the discussion here at this point in my explorations is that many otherwise intelligent Europeans absolutely fear Russia. They believe 1) Putin is a madman, 2) Putin's invasion was 'unprovoked', 3) regime change in Russia is legitimate and necessary, 4) Putin is an imperialist who wants to reconstitute the greater Soviet Union, 5) if Putin gets Ukraine he will undoubtedly go after Poland, Romania and the Baltics...and then more, and 6) the Ukrainian cause is just and should be pursued until 'victory'. Even if it means billions of dollars of cost and hundreds of thousands of casualties in Ukraine I ask? Yes, comes the answer.
So to this extent I believe Mearsheimer is still correct...and relevant, notwithstanding Russian battlefield victories and military superiority. The point being Mearsheimer's point that the war is existential for Europeans, too, and I don't see how they will stop as long as they believe this. It is important to understand that objective reality is not the point. What they believe is the point.
And, isn't it also the case that while Russia seems virtually certain to prevail militarily, and the West seems to be running out of hardware to deliver to Ukraine, the West also has deep pockets (even if they are filled only with printed money) and can keep the war going for quite a while longer if there are still soldiers to be found to put in the field.
I know this is not a very hopeful report. It does seem to mirror Mearsheimer's pessimism, however.
We know a few Russian expats here in Europe and they too think of Putin as evil and deserving of extermination. Which interestingly puts them at odds with their folks back home.
I believe what Hudson is talking about is the resurrection of the American System which was done to great success in the past look up the Carey's and Hamilton. It has both private and public capital going towards infrastructure projects and pushes money towards productive means not speculative activities like what we have now. Matt Ehret has a number of books and articles about this and other subjects on how this mess started and how American and European patriots (see Fredrich List in Germany) have been fighting this for centuries.
It's complicated. The easy response to your totally valid question is to suggest going all the way back through the archives here to the beginning and reading your way forward. Before I got sidetracked with the Russia Hoax, Covid Hoax, and now the Russia war, the question of the nature of Western civilization--its origins and how it came apart and the nature of what has replaced it--is what I wrote about.
Short answer to give an idea of where I come from. I regard the thought of Thomas Aquinas as the high point of Western civilization. However, it was a fairly unique high point that wasn't really representative of the dominantly Neoplatonic intellectuality of the West. Aquinas' thought WAS representative, by and large, of the best instincts of Christian faith but the institutions of the West, which were primarily maintained by the Church, proved incapable of institutionalizing his thought. The result was a degeneration into the consequences of Neoplatonism--a destructive skepticism that, following the religious upheaval, bifurcated during the Enlightenment into Anglo ideology (Classical Liberalism) and the German Ideology that started from Kant. The German Ideology has attained major influence throughout the West, including in the progressive US.
I think this gives some food for thought regarding the genesis of what has become known as Western Civilization and its lack of acknowledgement of the Byzantine Empire in much of Western studies. As a former Roman Catholic and now an Orthodox Christian I find the article quite interesting and illuminating less for Christian theology, which is an important aspect, but for the greatness of the Romans of the East. I have said myself that a lot of the revisionism of Western Civ was spun beginning in the 19th century as academia rewrote history to align with their biased perspective. This may not necessarily answer Dave T's question, but it does offer some interesting history that generally goes untaught in the West and is overly simplistic. We get references to Greece in citing the heritage of Democracy in the West, but there is much more to it than just the ancients of Athens and Sparta.
The "foundational philosophy" I refer to is the realist philosophy implicit in Christian faith, as I've written about at length earlier. Claude Tresmontant wrote about this in The Origin of Christian Philosophy. I translated a masterwork that discusses the centrality of realism and the progress of the breakdown as it accelerated in the early 20th century:
Thomism is not based in Aristotelian thought--a popular misunderstanding--which is actually a version of Platonism. Too long to go into here, consult Gilson's books. Aquinas' thought is based on what Gilson refers to as "the metaphysics of Exodus."
Brilliant & comprehensive look at Ukraine from John Mearsheimer.
"It should be apparent by now that the Ukraine war is an enormous disaster that is unlikely to end anytime soon and when it does, the result will not be a lasting peace. A few words are in order about how the West ended up in this dreadful situation."
Others have also brought this Mearshimer article up. I've maintained elsewhere that I don't find it terribly brilliant. M repeats what he's been saying for a long time but without taking account of developments. What I'm referring to is the increasing evidence that the military endgame--short of the US attempting an all out war on Russia--is approaching at an increasing pace. Further, M assumes a stability in the Eurozone that patently no longer exists--not militarily, not politically, not economically, not culturally or societally. M has been a prophetic voice in the long leadup to this latest self inflicted Western tragedy, but he needs to update his thinking. There may never be a negotiated peace, but by the same token there may well be a militarily imposed peace. As for M's "few words ... about how the West ended up in this dreadful situation," the words are far too few. The West got in this dreadful situation as a result of a centuries long process of cultural dissolution, which has accelerated as the culture of Western civilization has dissolved and been replaced by anti-human ideologies. Russia is struggling to break free of that process--whether it will ultimately succeed is not certain. As for the Eurozone and America, only America shows ,much in the way of cultural resilience, and even here there are doubts of whether that can succeed--even were we to extricate ourselves from this insane war.
He assumes no change in key govt in the West and those positions holding the line. There are daily signals and events (ie. France this week) that isn't assured. Right now the US is hanging in there, but there are clear signs that behind the scenes doubts exist.
A combination of continued Biden political and cerebral decline along with increasing recognition that Ukraine is a disaster will lead to US looking for the exit ramp even before the 2024 results are in. This will become a bigger and bigger issue in the election as the full impact of the Ukraine disaster (combined with recent memories of Biden's Afghan withdrawl debacle) will provide fuel and energy for movement to disengage from foreign entanglements as a key election issue.
Russia will demand, and receive, what they want (end of sanctions, neutral Ukraine, NATO pullback) and our European friends are about to experience what our Afghan friends experienced when we decided it was time to go. The final curtain on NATO hasn't come down yet, but there's a fat lady warming up backstage. EU is next to fall.
It's a thoughtful article for its discussion of what's going on, but the characterization of the new era as "neomedieval" ads nothing discernable to the analysis. The author nowhere explains what "medieval" means to him, so "neomedieval" makes no particular sense.
Yes it is not clear. It does seem, however, that he is generally referring to "that which preceded nation states." As vague as that is, it seems that he associates that situation with "balkanization" and national fragmentation (like Robert Kaplan predicted), populism, and intrastate conflict and turmoil. Interesting that the same think tanks and institutions that promoted weakening of nation states in favor of globalism now seem to bemoan the situations they helped bring about.
Fragmented power structures? Hmmm.. I wonder where notions like “mixed government” and “checks and balances” come from. If you are faulting those “fragmented power structures” for being ineffectual and weak (especially compared to the modern centralized and bureaucratic leviathan), then… I’m not quite sure where the problem lies.
Wars and social instability? You’re kidding, right? Modernity “perfected” and expanded the former. With its obsession with “CHANGE! PROGRESS! IMPROVEMENT!” modernity practically promotes and celebrates the latter.
The conquests of Gaul and England? The separation of the Western Roman and Eastern Byzantine Empires? The Holy Roman empire? Quite the fragmented power structure and neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. The papal schisms? Apart from those, in the late middle ages and early Renaissance there were a continual string of conflicts that had nothing to do with the religious wars, for example France vs. England vs. England (100 yrs war and War of the Roses), the Hapsburgs vs. everyone else, Burgundy vs. France, France vs. Italy, the English vs. the Spanish, and so forth.
However, seeing we are heading for zero carbon - absolute zero if at all possible- we will be riding around on horses with shields, iron swords and spears to wage war. Neo-medieval sounds not so far off.
All history seems to be characterized by, "wars, social instability and fragmented power structures." What changes is the who, what, where and when and the why.
Government of the people, by the people and for the people has perished from this earth. Now if these little kiddies want to play at empire....do the citizens care?
Hudson does a very good job at describing the reasons for the impending end of the American Empire.
However, when I read "The idea that money and credit should be privatized in the hands of a narrow financial class instead of being a public utility to finance economic needs and rising living standards is finally facing its reckoning" I had to laugh.
Does Hudson not realize that in our present oligarchy, putting money and credit in the hands of the government is no different than "privatizing it in the hands of a narrow financial class"? The money and credit just take slightly different paths to get into the same hands. As government spending as a percentage of GDP has risen over the years, so has the concentration of wealth in the top 10% and the top 1%. OK, correlation may not be entirely causation... but still it seems an indication that Hudson's assumptions about government's ability to act as a "public utility" are in error.
No different? I would respectfully disagree. What Hudson means, I believe, is that what is called money today is mainly created by private parties “at interest”. You pay for the privilege of using it. Money à la Constitution was pure government money that was issued with backing by gold. That’s a huge world of difference IMHO. And I rather think that that is what Hudson was getting at. By coincidence this video was included in a recent Zerohedge piece. It includes a useful primer on the basics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfEBupAeo4
Just finished watching the video - fantastic! Thanks again for the link. I don't presume to read Hudson's mind or intentions but it could be he was thinking along these lines. In any case, the video is a real eye opener. Some of it I knew about but much of it I didn't - nevertheless it all fits and rings true. As the narrator says, this is stuff we never were taught in school. All of this information should certainly inform a rethinking and relearning of our Western history. The more people exposed to this the better.
Shucks... I can't see tweets anymore. Twitter changed it yesterday so you need to have an account and log in. Musk says it is temporary to fix data pillaging problems leading to performance issues. Sure hope so as I don't want to sign up.
Sorry. Richard Haass has resigned after 20 yrs leading the Council on Foreign Relations. He was an all in globalist who wanted nation-states to cede their sovereignity to international governing bodies like WHO, WTO, NATO.
Seems he now wants to devote his time to supporting his country - yeah, the same one he spent his career tearing down. Thanks again for alerting me/us to this resignation.
Thanks, ccdirtdawgs. That certainly sounds like a good development. I am quite sure that the way things are going in the Ukraine and in the world generally as a result of the war on Russia is making a lot of the neoliberal think tank denizens squirm more than a little at this point. And the CFR is of course the biggest and most prestigious of them.
Or if the oligarchy is deposed. I often see subtle signs that this is indeed happening, but I got called Pollyanna a lot back in the prehistoric days of my youth. Lol
I'm surprised & thankful they haven't already. Probably only because they're only just figuring out that nothing in their limited playbook scripts works so swimmingly any more.
I find nothing kinder or gentler about our Oligarch's in fact, they seem to be even more monstrous that those of empires past. They have wealth and power and are not satisfied unless they are accorded god on earth status to control and eliminate, with approval, large swaths of humanity.
I know that Mark has quite a few readers in Europe. I wonder if you are hearing what I am hearing.
I'm an American who is spending the summer in the 'home country' in northern Europe...not too far from Russia...Well, 700 miles, but it seems close enough to some of my friends and relatives.
Of course I haven't been able to resist discussing the Ukraine situation. The one point I would add to the discussion here at this point in my explorations is that many otherwise intelligent Europeans absolutely fear Russia. They believe 1) Putin is a madman, 2) Putin's invasion was 'unprovoked', 3) regime change in Russia is legitimate and necessary, 4) Putin is an imperialist who wants to reconstitute the greater Soviet Union, 5) if Putin gets Ukraine he will undoubtedly go after Poland, Romania and the Baltics...and then more, and 6) the Ukrainian cause is just and should be pursued until 'victory'. Even if it means billions of dollars of cost and hundreds of thousands of casualties in Ukraine I ask? Yes, comes the answer.
So to this extent I believe Mearsheimer is still correct...and relevant, notwithstanding Russian battlefield victories and military superiority. The point being Mearsheimer's point that the war is existential for Europeans, too, and I don't see how they will stop as long as they believe this. It is important to understand that objective reality is not the point. What they believe is the point.
And, isn't it also the case that while Russia seems virtually certain to prevail militarily, and the West seems to be running out of hardware to deliver to Ukraine, the West also has deep pockets (even if they are filled only with printed money) and can keep the war going for quite a while longer if there are still soldiers to be found to put in the field.
I know this is not a very hopeful report. It does seem to mirror Mearsheimer's pessimism, however.
We know a few Russian expats here in Europe and they too think of Putin as evil and deserving of extermination. Which interestingly puts them at odds with their folks back home.
I believe what Hudson is talking about is the resurrection of the American System which was done to great success in the past look up the Carey's and Hamilton. It has both private and public capital going towards infrastructure projects and pushes money towards productive means not speculative activities like what we have now. Matt Ehret has a number of books and articles about this and other subjects on how this mess started and how American and European patriots (see Fredrich List in Germany) have been fighting this for centuries.
"foundational philosophy of Western civilization" as described in : https://www.perplexity.ai/search/204e9abb-056a-46a9-9626-b9d899aa083a ?
It's complicated. The easy response to your totally valid question is to suggest going all the way back through the archives here to the beginning and reading your way forward. Before I got sidetracked with the Russia Hoax, Covid Hoax, and now the Russia war, the question of the nature of Western civilization--its origins and how it came apart and the nature of what has replaced it--is what I wrote about.
Short answer to give an idea of where I come from. I regard the thought of Thomas Aquinas as the high point of Western civilization. However, it was a fairly unique high point that wasn't really representative of the dominantly Neoplatonic intellectuality of the West. Aquinas' thought WAS representative, by and large, of the best instincts of Christian faith but the institutions of the West, which were primarily maintained by the Church, proved incapable of institutionalizing his thought. The result was a degeneration into the consequences of Neoplatonism--a destructive skepticism that, following the religious upheaval, bifurcated during the Enlightenment into Anglo ideology (Classical Liberalism) and the German Ideology that started from Kant. The German Ideology has attained major influence throughout the West, including in the progressive US.
Mark, I might suggest those who are avid readers of history contemplate this article:
https://www.unz.com/article/byzantine-revisionism-unlocks-world-history/
I think this gives some food for thought regarding the genesis of what has become known as Western Civilization and its lack of acknowledgement of the Byzantine Empire in much of Western studies. As a former Roman Catholic and now an Orthodox Christian I find the article quite interesting and illuminating less for Christian theology, which is an important aspect, but for the greatness of the Romans of the East. I have said myself that a lot of the revisionism of Western Civ was spun beginning in the 19th century as academia rewrote history to align with their biased perspective. This may not necessarily answer Dave T's question, but it does offer some interesting history that generally goes untaught in the West and is overly simplistic. We get references to Greece in citing the heritage of Democracy in the West, but there is much more to it than just the ancients of Athens and Sparta.
The "foundational philosophy" I refer to is the realist philosophy implicit in Christian faith, as I've written about at length earlier. Claude Tresmontant wrote about this in The Origin of Christian Philosophy. I translated a masterwork that discusses the centrality of realism and the progress of the breakdown as it accelerated in the early 20th century:
https://www.amazon.com/Thomist-Realism-Critique-Knowledge-Etienne/dp/1586176854/ref=sr_1_1
Also highly recommended for its broad overview of the flawed philosophical background of the West:
https://www.amazon.com/Unity-Philosophical-Experience-Etienne-Gilson/dp/089870748X/ref=sr_1_1
Thomism is not based in Aristotelian thought--a popular misunderstanding--which is actually a version of Platonism. Too long to go into here, consult Gilson's books. Aquinas' thought is based on what Gilson refers to as "the metaphysics of Exodus."
Brilliant & comprehensive look at Ukraine from John Mearsheimer.
"It should be apparent by now that the Ukraine war is an enormous disaster that is unlikely to end anytime soon and when it does, the result will not be a lasting peace. A few words are in order about how the West ended up in this dreadful situation."
https://open.substack.com/pub/mearsheimer/p/the-darkness-ahead-where-the-ukraine?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android.
Also see interview on Glenn Greenwald System Update
https://rumble.com/v2x7via-system-update-show-109.html
Others have also brought this Mearshimer article up. I've maintained elsewhere that I don't find it terribly brilliant. M repeats what he's been saying for a long time but without taking account of developments. What I'm referring to is the increasing evidence that the military endgame--short of the US attempting an all out war on Russia--is approaching at an increasing pace. Further, M assumes a stability in the Eurozone that patently no longer exists--not militarily, not politically, not economically, not culturally or societally. M has been a prophetic voice in the long leadup to this latest self inflicted Western tragedy, but he needs to update his thinking. There may never be a negotiated peace, but by the same token there may well be a militarily imposed peace. As for M's "few words ... about how the West ended up in this dreadful situation," the words are far too few. The West got in this dreadful situation as a result of a centuries long process of cultural dissolution, which has accelerated as the culture of Western civilization has dissolved and been replaced by anti-human ideologies. Russia is struggling to break free of that process--whether it will ultimately succeed is not certain. As for the Eurozone and America, only America shows ,much in the way of cultural resilience, and even here there are doubts of whether that can succeed--even were we to extricate ourselves from this insane war.
Col @DougAMacgregor joins the twitter party. Interesting early tweet.
https://twitter.com/DougAMacgregor/status/1675578381721649152?s=19
He assumes no change in key govt in the West and those positions holding the line. There are daily signals and events (ie. France this week) that isn't assured. Right now the US is hanging in there, but there are clear signs that behind the scenes doubts exist.
A combination of continued Biden political and cerebral decline along with increasing recognition that Ukraine is a disaster will lead to US looking for the exit ramp even before the 2024 results are in. This will become a bigger and bigger issue in the election as the full impact of the Ukraine disaster (combined with recent memories of Biden's Afghan withdrawl debacle) will provide fuel and energy for movement to disengage from foreign entanglements as a key election issue.
Russia will demand, and receive, what they want (end of sanctions, neutral Ukraine, NATO pullback) and our European friends are about to experience what our Afghan friends experienced when we decided it was time to go. The final curtain on NATO hasn't come down yet, but there's a fat lady warming up backstage. EU is next to fall.
Col @DougAMacgregor just joined @Twitter and stormed the party with this early tweet.
https://twitter.com/DougAMacgregor/status/1675578381721649152?s=19
HERE IS WHAT THE MEDIA WILL NOT TELL YOU..
Ukrainian forces are on the verge of collapse, they are totally demoralized.
They've all been killed, it's OVER.
It's a thoughtful article for its discussion of what's going on, but the characterization of the new era as "neomedieval" ads nothing discernable to the analysis. The author nowhere explains what "medieval" means to him, so "neomedieval" makes no particular sense.
Yes it is not clear. It does seem, however, that he is generally referring to "that which preceded nation states." As vague as that is, it seems that he associates that situation with "balkanization" and national fragmentation (like Robert Kaplan predicted), populism, and intrastate conflict and turmoil. Interesting that the same think tanks and institutions that promoted weakening of nation states in favor of globalism now seem to bemoan the situations they helped bring about.
Using “medieval” as a rhetorical slur. How original.
Fragmented power structures? Hmmm.. I wonder where notions like “mixed government” and “checks and balances” come from. If you are faulting those “fragmented power structures” for being ineffectual and weak (especially compared to the modern centralized and bureaucratic leviathan), then… I’m not quite sure where the problem lies.
Wars and social instability? You’re kidding, right? Modernity “perfected” and expanded the former. With its obsession with “CHANGE! PROGRESS! IMPROVEMENT!” modernity practically promotes and celebrates the latter.
I thought that was the modern age, say, from the Reformation on.
The conquests of Gaul and England? The separation of the Western Roman and Eastern Byzantine Empires? The Holy Roman empire? Quite the fragmented power structure and neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. The papal schisms? Apart from those, in the late middle ages and early Renaissance there were a continual string of conflicts that had nothing to do with the religious wars, for example France vs. England vs. England (100 yrs war and War of the Roses), the Hapsburgs vs. everyone else, Burgundy vs. France, France vs. Italy, the English vs. the Spanish, and so forth.
However, seeing we are heading for zero carbon - absolute zero if at all possible- we will be riding around on horses with shields, iron swords and spears to wage war. Neo-medieval sounds not so far off.
All history seems to be characterized by, "wars, social instability and fragmented power structures." What changes is the who, what, where and when and the why.
If it were only the American empire.....
Government of the people, by the people and for the people has perished from this earth. Now if these little kiddies want to play at empire....do the citizens care?
Hudson does a very good job at describing the reasons for the impending end of the American Empire.
However, when I read "The idea that money and credit should be privatized in the hands of a narrow financial class instead of being a public utility to finance economic needs and rising living standards is finally facing its reckoning" I had to laugh.
Does Hudson not realize that in our present oligarchy, putting money and credit in the hands of the government is no different than "privatizing it in the hands of a narrow financial class"? The money and credit just take slightly different paths to get into the same hands. As government spending as a percentage of GDP has risen over the years, so has the concentration of wealth in the top 10% and the top 1%. OK, correlation may not be entirely causation... but still it seems an indication that Hudson's assumptions about government's ability to act as a "public utility" are in error.
No different? I would respectfully disagree. What Hudson means, I believe, is that what is called money today is mainly created by private parties “at interest”. You pay for the privilege of using it. Money à la Constitution was pure government money that was issued with backing by gold. That’s a huge world of difference IMHO. And I rather think that that is what Hudson was getting at. By coincidence this video was included in a recent Zerohedge piece. It includes a useful primer on the basics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfEBupAeo4
Just finished watching the video - fantastic! Thanks again for the link. I don't presume to read Hudson's mind or intentions but it could be he was thinking along these lines. In any case, the video is a real eye opener. Some of it I knew about but much of it I didn't - nevertheless it all fits and rings true. As the narrator says, this is stuff we never were taught in school. All of this information should certainly inform a rethinking and relearning of our Western history. The more people exposed to this the better.
Thanks for the link. I very much look forward to viewing the video (as soon as I can get the time!).
Thanks
This resignation just popped up on Kanekoa's Twitter - https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1675299604139765761
It strikes me as quite significant, but I'm unable to articulate why. Think I'll just sit back holding my breath hoping NATO collapses next.
Shucks... I can't see tweets anymore. Twitter changed it yesterday so you need to have an account and log in. Musk says it is temporary to fix data pillaging problems leading to performance issues. Sure hope so as I don't want to sign up.
Sorry. Richard Haass has resigned after 20 yrs leading the Council on Foreign Relations. He was an all in globalist who wanted nation-states to cede their sovereignity to international governing bodies like WHO, WTO, NATO.
FYI, ccdirtdawgs:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/the-sun-sets-on-richard-n-haasss
Seems he now wants to devote his time to supporting his country - yeah, the same one he spent his career tearing down. Thanks again for alerting me/us to this resignation.
Thanks, ccdirtdawgs. That certainly sounds like a good development. I am quite sure that the way things are going in the Ukraine and in the world generally as a result of the war on Russia is making a lot of the neoliberal think tank denizens squirm more than a little at this point. And the CFR is of course the biggest and most prestigious of them.
Ahem...
http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
24 page PDF on the Fate of Empires. Roughly 250 years. The US is right on schedule.
Cheers
So, do we count from 1776 or 1789?
Thanks for providing the link to this paper. I intend to read as son as I get back from the grocery store. Honey-do's you see. ;o)
Can't argue with a word.
Or if the oligarchy is deposed. I often see subtle signs that this is indeed happening, but I got called Pollyanna a lot back in the prehistoric days of my youth. Lol
The Mongols knew how to take care of Oligarchs.
I'm surprised & thankful they haven't already. Probably only because they're only just figuring out that nothing in their limited playbook scripts works so swimmingly any more.
I find nothing kinder or gentler about our Oligarch's in fact, they seem to be even more monstrous that those of empires past. They have wealth and power and are not satisfied unless they are accorded god on earth status to control and eliminate, with approval, large swaths of humanity.