by
Paul Craig Roberts
PaulCraigRoberts.org

Recently
by Paul Craig Roberts: Hubris
as the Evil Force in History

When President
Reagan nominated me as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic
Policy, he told me that we had to restore the US economy, to rescue
it from stagflation, in order to bring the full weight of a powerful
economy to bear on the Soviet leadership, in order to convince them
to negotiate the end of the cold war. Reagan said that there was
no reason to live any longer under the threat of nuclear war.

The Reagan
administration achieved both goals, only to see these accomplishments
discarded by successor administrations. It was ReaganÂ’s own
vice president and successor, George Herbert Walker Bush, who first
violated the Reagan-Gorbachev understandings by incorporating former
constituent parts of the Soviet Empire into NATO and taking Western
military bases to the Russian frontier.

The process
of surrounding Russia with military bases continued unabated through
successor US administrations with various “color revolutions”
financed by the US National Endowment for Democracy, regarded by
many as a front for the CIA. Washington even attempted to install
a Washington-controlled government in Ukraine and did succeed in
this effort in former Soviet Georgia, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin.

The President
of Georgia, a country located between the Black Sea and the Caspian
Sea, is a Washington puppet. Recently, he announced that former
Soviet Georgia is on schedule to become a NATO member in 2014.

Those old enough
to remember know that NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
was an alliance between Western Europe and the US against the threat
of the Red Army overrunning Western Europe. The North Atlantic is
a long, long ways from the Black and Caspian Seas. What is the purpose
of Georgia being a NATO member except to give Washington a military
base on the Russian underbelly?

The evidence
is simply overwhelming that Washington–both parties–have
Russia and China targeted. Whether the purpose is to destroy both
countries or merely to render them unable to oppose WashingtonÂ’s
world hegemony is unclear at this time. Regardless of the purpose,
nuclear war is the likely outcome.

The presstitute
American press pretends that an evil Syrian government is murdering
innocent citizens who only want democracy and that if the UN wonÂ’t
intervene militarily, the US must in order to save human rights.
Russia and China are vilified by US functionaries for opposing any
pretext for a NATO invasion of Syria.

The facts,
of course, are different from those presented by the presstitute
American media and members of the US government. The Syrian “rebels”
are well armed with military weapons. The “rebels” are
battling the Syrian army. The rebels massacre civilians and report
to their media whores in the West that the deed was done by the
Syrian government, and the Western presstitutes spread the propaganda.

Someone is
arming the “rebels” as obviously the weapons can’t
be purchased in local Syrian markets. Most intelligent people believe
the weapons are coming from the US or from US surrogates.

So, Washington
has started a civil war in Syria, as it did in Libya, but this time
the gullible Russians and Chinese have caught on and have refused
to permit a UN resolution like the one the West exploited against
Gaddafi.

To get around
this roadblock, fish out an ancient Phantom fighter jet from the
1960s Vietnam war era and have Turkey fly it into Syria. The Syrians
will shoot it down, and then Turkey can appeal to its NATO allies
to come to its aid against Syria. Denied the UN option, Washington
can invoke its obligation under the NATO treaty, and go to war in
defense of a NATO member against a demonized Syria.

The neoconservative
lie behind WashingtonÂ’s wars of hegemony is that the US is
bringing democracy to the invaded and bombed countries. To paraphrase
Mao, “democracy comes out of the barrel of a gun.” However,
the Arab Spring has come up short on democracy, as have Iraq and
Afghanistan, two countries “liberated” by US democratic
invasions.

What the US
is bringing is civil wars and the breakup of countries, as President
Bill ClintonÂ’s regime achieved in former Yugoslavia. The more
countries can be torn into pieces and dissolved into rival factions,
the more powerful is Washington.

RussiaÂ’s
Putin understands that Russia itself is threatened not only by WashingtonÂ’s
funding of the “Russian opposition,” but also by the strife
among Muslims unleashed by WashingtonÂ’s wars against secular
Muslim states, such as Iraq and Syria. This discord spreads into
Russia itself and presents Russia with problems such as Chechen
terrorism.

When a secular
state is overthrown, the Islamist factions become free to be at
one anotherÂ’s throats. The internal strife renders the countries
impotent. As I wrote previously, the West always prevails in the
Middle East because the Islamist factions hate one another more
than they hate their Western conquerers. Thus, when Washington destroys
secular, non-Islamist governments as in Iraq and now targeted in
Syria, the Islamists emerge and battle one another for supremacy.
This suits Washington and Israel as these states cease to be coherent
opponents.

Russia is vulnerable,
because Putin is demonized by Washington and the US media and because
PutinÂ’s Russian opposition is financed by Washington and serves
US, not Russian, interests. The turmoil that Washington is unleashing
in Muslim states leaks back to RussiaÂ’s Muslim populations.

It has proved
to be more difficult for Washington to interfere in ChinaÂ’s
internal affairs, although discord has been sowed in some provinces.
Several years from now, the Chinese economy is expected to exceed
in size the US economy, with an Asian power displacing a Western
one as the worldÂ’s most powerful economy.

Washington
is deeply disturbed by this prospect. In the thrall and under the
control of Wall Street and other special interest business groups,
Washington is unable to rescue the US economy from its decline.
The short-run gambling profits of Wall Street, the war profits of
the military/security complex, and the profits from offshoring the
production of goods and services for US markets have far more representation
in Washington than the wellbeing of US citizens. As the US economy
sinks, the Chinese economy rises.

WashingtonÂ’s
response is to militarize the Pacific. The US Secretary of State
has declared the South China Sea to be an area of American national
interest. The US is wooing the Philippine government, playing the
China threat card, and working on getting the US Navy invited back
to its former base at Subic Bay. Recently there were joint US/Philippines
military/naval exercises against the “China threat.”

The US Navy
is reallocating fleets to the Pacific Ocean and constructing a new
naval base on a South Korean island. US Marines are now based in
Australia and are being reallocated from Japan to other Asian countries.
The Chinese are not stupid. They understand that Washington is attempting
to corral China.

For
a country incapable of occupying Iraq after 8 years and incapable
of occupying Afghanistan after 11 years, to simultaneously take
on two nuclear powers is an act of insanity. The hubris in Washington,
fed daily by the crazed neocons, despite extraordinary failure in
Iraq and Afghanistan, has now targeted formidable powers–Russia
and China. The world has never in its entire history witnessed such
idiocy.

The psychopaths,
sociopaths, and morons who prevail in Washington are leading the
world to destruction.

The criminally
insane government in Washington, regardless whether Democrat or
Republican, regardless of the outcome of the next election, is the
greatest threat to life on earth that has ever existed.

Moreover, the
only financing the Washington criminals have is the printing press.
In a subsequent column I will examine whether the US economy will
complete its collapse before the war criminals in Washington can
destroy the world.

June
29, 2012

Paul
Craig Roberts, a
former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases
of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book,

The
Tyranny of Good Intentions,
co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how
americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random
House. Visit his website.

Copyright
© 2012 Paul
Craig Roberts

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