A critical look at history reveals that World War II started in 1933, not 1939.

With the invocation of a state of war and the granting of war powers to the head of state, Nazi Germany was emboldened to begin their rampage of propaganda-fueled totalitarianism and ultimately invasion, mass murder and assimilation.

The official World War II commencement date of 1st September 1939 marks the day that England and France declared war and began openly militarily opposing Germany’s aggressive, expansionist agenda.

It is the date that officials were finally allowed to confirm to the public who were subsequently engaged (and drafted) to support it, that there was in fact a World War going on.

But with a slew of countries already having been breached by invading armies, World War II had begun well prior to the public acknowledgement of it.

Similarly, World War III will not be determined by the history books to have officially begun until a country or a coalition of countries formally stand to oppose and/or declare war against the now long campaign of invasion, subversion and international destabilisation perpetrated by the United States and their allies.

But nonetheless – even in the absence of such proclamations, World War III is well underway. That fact is only now filtering through to the awareness of the global public.

My analysis of the 1933 – 1939 period in Germany’s history has grave implications. The diplomatic and military conduct of Nazi Germany eerily mirrors that of the USA & co (hereafter colloquially described as The US Empire) in the period 2001 – 2016.

The events leading up to World War II and World War III are scarily similar.

Acclaimed author Naomi Klein has often written about the 10 steps to fascism and warned that they apply to America. She lists the decline into fascism as being indicated by (paraphrasing);

1. Otherisation (creating an enemy)
2. Gulags (Guantanamo)
3. Paramilitary (outsourced military)
4. Immunised thuggery (Blackwater etc)
5. Domestic surveillance (NSA/facial recognition systems etc),
6. Arbitrary detention (TSA etc)
7. Targeting individuals
8. Subversion of media
9. Abuse of the definition and terms of espionage and treason, and
10. Legislative suspension of the rule of law.

This article will go beyond that, to look not just at the general trends and conditions but to compare the chronology of the specific acts of Nazi Germany with those of the modern day US Empire, in the context of World War II and the now well underway World War III.

The Naked Agenda

The most nefarious of acts are not the dastardly deeds waged covertly, in secret, but those executed publically in plain sight and then employed on a massive scale.

“Hitler never made a secret of his aims, he committed them to print and repeated them in countless speeches… he triumphed because the world was blind to the signals he constantly raised. Time and time again Hitler could have been stopped. By his fellow Germans first, and by foreign leaders later. Not until 1939 did the Allied leaders move to contain him and by then it was too late to block his road to war.” — from the documentary film ‘World War II – Germany – Road To War’

Time and time again over the last 15 years The Empire has declared that it is at war. They proclaimed that there would be multiple theatres of operation. That their “enemies” were numerous and would be hunted wherever they resided or roamed. Yet somehow we didn’t take it seriously enough.

Numbed to the overblown rhetoric of Western leaders, it never quite sunk in to the global public that America declaring a state of emergency, invoking war powers, dramatically expanding military capabilities and financing, employing legions of mercenaries, invading a string of foreign nations, upending elected governments, occupying foreign lands, incurring civilian casualties into the millions, creating massive refugee crises and incessantly lying about their motives for it, was in fact them instigating a Third World War.

Warning Signs

The subversion of constitutions and democratic principles is a common thread among all tyrants, dictators and military regimes.

When a permanent state of emergency was declared in Germany  and the “Enabling Act of 1933” passed, the stage was set for unending war.

While different in letter and inferior in scope to the far more complex USA Patriot Act of 2003, the ultimate aims were similar – to enhance the powers of the Nazi government to engage in internecine warfare, on whim.

Likewise, according to Wikipedia, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, the Bush Administration “asserted both a right and the intention to wage preemptive war, or preventive war. This became the basis for the Bush Doctrine.”

The Nazis soon used their powers to justify the execution and imprisonment of their own people and this is manifest in the recent conduct of The Empire also.

2012’s National Defense Authorization Act famously included provisions for the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens and US citizens have become targets of extrajudicial killings by their own government.

The stated justification? George Bush’s 2001 ‘Authorization To Use Military Force (AUMF).’

On 14th September 2001, Congress declared that the AUMF was:

“intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

An initial draft of Senate Joint Resolution 23 included language granting the power “to deter and preempt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States… Members were concerned that this would provide “a blank check to go anywhere, anytime, against anyone the Bush administration or any subsequent administration deemed capable of carrying out an attack” and the language was removed. Constitutional law specialist professor Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School has said that the Obama Administration’s use of the AUMF has so far overstepped the authorized powers of the final, enacted version of the bill as to more closely resemble the capabilities named in this draft text rejected by Congress.”

This is definitive proof that laws passed to expand the powers of the executive are carried over to subsequent administrations then employed as justifications and expanded upon, to devastating effect.

Wikipedia states that critics of the Bush Doctrine “were suspicious of the increasing willingness of the United States to use military force unilaterally. Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson argued that it reflects a turn away from international law, and marks the end of American legitimacy in foreign affairs.”

Both Nazi Germany and The US Empire share the trait of justifying their non-compliance with international law and treaties by manufactured legal caveat, to enable the abdication of their democratic responsibilities.

Germany claimed that international treaties were not adhered to by their political adversaries and therefore it need not uphold or be bound by them. The same argument has been made by Western powers about everything from the Kyoto Protocol, to torture.

Another similarity is a self-righteous contempt for established covenants governing the military conduct of nations.

In 2002 the United States openly stated that it would not abide by the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

Likewise Nazi Germany’s failure to abide by the 1929 Conventions have been thoroughly documented.

War Dressed As Peace

Peace is an endlessly abused idealistic concept that quite obviously cannot ever be achieved by bombs, military expansion and more recently, drone warfare, yet we hear the term invoked over and over again in the speeches of the warmongers.

Incessant talk of peace in the context of waging preemptive war is a constant with both Nazi Germany and the modern day US Empire.

“Yearning for peace was greater in no other country of the world, was no more vibrant, than in the German volk” Hitler audaciously claimed, in one of countless such addresses.

‘The Road To War’ notes that Hitler “was always proclaiming his love of peace.”

Stated intentions to pursue peace while preparing for war were viscerally demonstrated at the Olympics of 1936 where Nazi Germany practised the Olympic tradition instituted in 1920 post-World War I by releasing 30,000 thousand white doves, in the immediate wake of their illegal occupation of the Rhineland.

In 2009, President Obama famously droned on for over 30 minutes about peace in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. This despite his administration having dramatically advanced the prevalence and use of obscene and high-tech methods of achieving extrajudicial killings, an extension of that which was employed in George W. Bush’s hegemonic and interventionist foreign policy.

Conquest In Stages

Every Empire has a Grand Poobah with a master plan, supported by a vast bureaucracy with fistfuls of them.

The obsession with strategic planning reassures them of their longevity. Yet their thirst for victory and conquest is never sated. It is an addiction. Once the cogs of war are greased and in motion they become trapped in a cycle of their own inertia.

Inevitably the velocity they generate speeds them towards their undoing.

Nazi Germany’s trail of subjugation forged across Central Europe. Back to back unopposed and largely bloodless successes bolstered its aspirations to impose dominion over the greater Western European continent. The further that aim progressed, the more murderous the campaign.

Ultimately this brought them to the doorstep of the seat of power in the USSR as well as into the North Atlantic maritime channel, to the British Isles.

Photographs of Hitler’s command show him and his generals pouring over a map reminiscent of a plus-sized replica of the board game “Risk”.

‘Risk’ is a great analogy for how war planners see war. To them it is not the stark reality of their lawlessness; the blood and bone, murder and rape, mass displacement; it is a map, upon which is determined the geographical control, monopolisation, distribution and ownership of resources.

According to General Wesley Clark, back in 2001 the U.S. Department of Defense also had a plan and it went far beyond the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

“He said we’re…starting with Iraq then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran.” — General Wesley Clark

The plan is not about democracy, or security, or fighting terrorism. The plan is about control. Just like Nazi Germany and many other Empires before them; they want to rule the world.

Each conquest is a launchpad for the next.

The invasion of Iraq allowed the United States to establish bases and to prepare itself for conflict in Syria. The invasion of Poland allowed Nazi Germany to establish bases and fortifications to prepare itself for the ground invasion of the USSR.

Nowadays, Ukraine is the new Poland.

The disbandment of the invaded nation’s military is another theme. Just as the Iraqi army was famously and disastrously dismantled post-invasion, Nazi Germany disbanded the Czech army, and others.

Stress factors for ethnic and religious tensions are deliberately exacerbated, as target countries are purposefully divided along sectarian lines by their invaders. The preconditions for civil war are maximised to provide further justification for an ongoing occupation, to create “bad guys” and “fall guys” and to prevent any cohesive opposition from forming or taking hold.

This invariably leads to sectarian warfare.

The tactic is simple: divide and conquer. Both Nazi Germany and The US Empire demonstrated the effectiveness of that strategy over and over again.

"Message from the mighty palace
Settled on the dirty streets
Got you fighting with your neighbour
Not the real enemy..."
- 'Wasted In The West' from FVEY by Shihad

Inaction By International Community

Inaction can be more dangerous than action.

In World  War II the Allied powers failed to act again and again. They did not act against Hitler when he positioned his troops in the Rhineland, nor when he later occupied Austria.

“In 1936, Hitler moved his troops into the [demilitarized] zone, claiming that the recent treaty between France and Russia threatened Germany’s safety.   His commanders had orders to retreat if the French army tried to stop them, but this time it was France who did nothing.   The League of Nations, busy with the Abyssinian crisis, also did nothing.” http://www.johndclare.net/EII1.htm

The following table from JohnDClare.net explains the ‘Appeasement’ policy exercised during 1933-1939:

The modern military campaigns of The Empire have until recent times also been largely unopposed.

Modeled off the above, here is my own table of recent events:

Notably, none of the countries in which they have intervened has achieved a peaceful outcome. Active conflict remains in all of the above, up to the time of this writing.

There is a glaringly obvious line missing from my table and that is the bottom line of the World War II table: the open declaration of war by a nation or nations willing to declare war in direct opposition to the activities of The Empire.

Propaganda and Pretexts

The inception of war is always based on propaganda. This is true for each aggressive action undertaken in both World War II and World War III.

Nazi propaganda is a thoroughly explored topic. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of full-length documentaries on the topic. From anti-semitic, anti-Jew propaganda, to pro-state, pro-fascism propaganda, to anti-whatever-the-next-country-to-be-invaded-is propaganda, were one gullible enough to be influenced by it, they could soon become convinced that each German conquest was actually all for the benefit of the nation whose borders they violated and whose populations they decimated.

Nazi Germany’s tales of Germanic peoples supposedly being repressed in neighbouring nations were used to justify its incursions into multiple European countries. These myths came replete with tailor-made news reports containing images of crying women holding babies and whole families supposedly fleeing their homes.

The US Empire uses manufactured intelligence, criticism of the conduct of other foreign governments and the constantly recycled memory of 9/11 to claim that they are the ones under attack, rather than the countries they destabilise and the regimes they politically and militarily oppose.

Another recurring theme for the US is its cyclical doomsday warnings about the mortal dangers of weapons of mass destruction. Chemical weapons in Iraq are “unacceptable”, chemical weapons in Syria are “the red line”… but there is little mention or concern for where and how these technologies were supplied to or obtained by the countries possessing them.

“The Reagan administration even allowed Saddam to purchase the ingredients for weapons of mass destruction in the US. ‘The blueprints for chemical factories were supplied by sub-contractors of American companies to help the Iraqis build their own chemical weapons… the law stops you supplying the chemical weapons but you can get away with it by supplying the actual plans.’ This is cynicism of the highest order.” — Saddam Hussein – The Truth (Documentary)

Apparently only some uses of chemical weapons are offensive to the international commu nity. Others are not. According to the then Chairman of the Chemical Weapons Commission, when Iraq used chemical weapons against the Kurds “not one in this whole, at that time, thirty-five state’s Conference on Disarmament… no one lifted a finger.”

I have investigated the stated justifications of Nazi Germany and of The US Empire, for each of their military incursions and created the following tables:

Of course, for the propaganda of the state to thrive, there must be a wholesale subjugation of the press. This can be achieved economically, through mergers and acquisitions of the corporations that own them; it can be accomplished through smear campaigns and career disadvantages for those who refuse to tow the line.

If none of that works, then there is the outright criminalisation of the truth and the persecution of those who tell it.

Hitler deemed “The Munich Post”, a publication run by some of his most vociferous critics, Social Democrats in Munich, “The Poison Kitchen“.

The Poison Kitchen’s suspicion and criticisms of Hitler date back to 1921. This half dozen journalists and editors spent a dozen years publishing truths that the world didn’t take seriously enough.

Ignoring the warnings of Hitler’s critics ultimately cost an estimated 60 million human lives.

The Holocaust Chronicle states:

“In Nazi circles, the Munich Post became known as the “Poison Kitchen.” Prior to the Nazi takeover in 1933, “the Hitler Party” tried to silence the Post with libel suits and death threats against its staff. Nevertheless, the newspaper’s anti-Nazi resistance continued. Well into February 1933, the Post continued to publish reports about political murders carried out by the Nazis. Among its final anti-Hitler accounts was a three-part series that valiantly tried to counter what the Post had long regarded as Hitler’s most destructive characteristic: his willful falsification of history. The Post foresaw Hitler’s aims as disastrous for Germany and the world. Its views, however, did not prevail. Before the 1932-33 winter had ended, the Post’s anti-Hitler reporting was smashed, its courageous journalists imprisoned or killed.”

Sara Twogood, in a history paper about the Munich Post published by the University of California Santa Barbara, writes:

“Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party rigorously censored the news and media immediately after Hitler gained power in Germany in 1933 and throughout World War II.  This extensive censorship made it impossible for any newspaper to stop or even obstruct Hitler in his political journey to exterminate non-Aryans during this powerful reign.”

Twogood continues:

“The Post was relentless in its reporting of the “secret death squad” within the NSDAP, called “Cell G”.  They had been caught “red-handed” trying to assassinate members of the Nazi party that had been exposed and held responsible for insider leaks, specifically about the sexual blackmail scandal. The last of a series of articles on this squad quoted Hitler saying, “Nothing happens in the movement without my knowledge, without my approval . . . Even more, nothing happens without my wish.”  This quote directly linked Hitler to the murders and covert violence of the NSDAP.  The Munich Post was the first newspaper to openly make this claim.”

Twogood references ‘Bernhard, Georg. “Tactics of Hitler.” New York Times, 13 December 1931, Sect III 1:8’ to show that the New York Times downplayed the significance and the risk of the Nazi’s cimes by publishing a flawed hypothesis that Hitler would just burn out or fade away of his own accord.

She writes:

“…the New York Times incorrectly predicted, “just as soon as this fostering soil becomes exhausted the National Socialists spook will vanish.  What will probably remain then will be a small, discontented bourgeois party.” This prediction was typical of other newspapers as well – it stated that Hitler would disappear and make no further impression.  The Munich Post knew he would not just disappear.  It warned that Hitler’s actions and ideas were dangerous and took them seriously, even when no one else did.”

As Hitler took power and death squads openly operated in broad daylight, the feverish warnings of The Poison Kitchen became even more desperate.

One author quoted in the text describes the Munich Post as ‘Cassandra-like‘, in reference to the Trojan prophetess who forewarns of the fall of Troy but is ignored.

As their own demise became ever more inevitable, a fact of which they must have been well aware, still they tried to diligently report on the travesties, in no uncertain terms:

“Followed were reports of the “political murder summary: eighteen dead and thirty-four badly wounded in death squad attacks.”  In February they continued to run such headlines and reports as “Nazi Party Hands Dripping with Blood” and “Germany Today: No Day without Death.”

The Post continued to fight on futilely against the onrushing strength of Hitler’s party until March 9, 1933, when the Nazis banned the last opposition papers still publishing… The Munich Post offices were turned over to an SA squad to pillage.  They gutted it completely… The writers and editors were dragged away to imprisonment in concentration camps.  That was the end of the Munich Post.  Its battle against Hitler and the Nazis had been lost.”

After 12 years of valiantly trying to warn the world about Hitler, these truth-tellers were silenced.

For another 12 years thereafter, Hitler’s regime would rampage across Europe, devastating country after country and causing the deaths of tens of milions of people.

It is important that we name the names of the courageous. Twogood concludes:

“Protesters to Hitler fought with their hearts and jeopardized their freedom and lives hoping the world would listen. These men included Martin Gruber, Erhard Auer, Edmund Goldschagg, Julius Zerfass and others, reporters and editors of the Munich Post.  They faced imprisonment and death, trying unsuccessfully to warn the world…”

With the passage of time, their truth rings ever stronger..

Even in this modern day, real journalists are often martyred for living up to the ideals of the profession. True journalism is a public service and a service to the historical record. To tell the unpopular truth about nefarious power, no matter the risk.

While the perilous days of The Poison Kitchen may seem long behind us, the preconditions for such a reoccurence surround us. Journalists around the world are being spied on and (in many cases, illegally) monitored by their governments using high-tech equipment and corresponding laws that were designed for combatting terrorism.

The death of American journalist Serena Shim and the lack of investigation into her passing; the jailing of citizen journalists who eye-witness police killings of unarmed citizens; the siege of WikiLeaks’ Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange; the litigation that brought Gawker media to its knees; the arrest and detention of Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and the felony charges against a documentary producer at #NoDAPL, are all dire warnings that we might not be so far away from an escalation to internment camps, arbitrary detention and open military conflict as we might like to think.

At any given time, The US Empire has an ace in their pocket: for as they are well aware, bringing the press to heel can also be achieved, most potently, by harnessing galvanising events such as perceived attacks upon the country.

As with the Reichstag Fire in 1933, or the Gulf of Tonkin naval incident at the start of the Vietnam War, the culpability for the incidents can often lie a lot closer to home than the establishment ever lets on.

False Flags

The brilliant journalist Glenn Greenwald is known for his sardonic, adversarial style when exercising righteous and biting criticism of the hegemony of The US Empire.

Never more deservedly so than this last week, when reporting on an incident that very easily could have been escalated into something vastly more sinister than it initially appeared.

Greenwald’s indignant tweet is dripping with sarcasm and understandably so, given the incredible imbalances of the protracted and very one-sided conflict in Yemen.

Plagued by US drone strikes for years, the country has basically become a weapons testing lab for Western powers and particularly the airforce of Saudi Arabia, who have accordingly copped most of the criticism for their constant and unforgiving aerial bombardment of Yemen. Yet, they are dropping US munitions upon a besieged and starving population and both US and UK military advisors are reported to be present alongside them.

The story coming out of mainstream sources, however, was stripped down, bland and lacking contextual information;

To hear CNN tell it, the poor, beleaguered (giant, cutting-edge) Western warship (in another country’s territorial waters) was unjustly attacked by (emaciated, underequipped) heathen natives (who just so happen to have been being picked off by flying killer robots for the last dozen years). And thus we see how in modern times, the truth often lays only in mental parentheses added by the astute reader. For everyone else, it’s – Yemen who? Where *is* the Red Sea?

In the wake of the hysteria, a different story emerged:

In this instance, the nemesis merely being the impoverished Yemen, the implications of such a misunderstanding was not on the scale of previous similar incidents.

Such as the most significant of all: the Gulf of Tonkin ‘false flag’, used to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that ultimately sparked the Vietnam War:

“The commodore at the time, Herrick, did say that there was one torpedo, but one had to take that with a good deal of salt, because he had been just as certain about the next 20 torpedoes, and it really took him many years before, looking at the evidence, he finally acknowledged that he had been mistaken about the first one as well. But even on that night, we knew that what the president proceeded to say and what McNamara proceeded to say to the press in television interviews, that the attack was unequivocal, we knew that that was false, as many years later it turned out that the assertions by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld that they had unequivocal evidence of WMDs, weapons of mass destruction, in Iraq were false and known to be false at the time…” — Daniel Ellsberg, interviewed by historian Gareth Porter.

According to the same article:

“Years later, then secretary of defense Robert McNamara admitted to the incident never taking place in this documentary Fog of War…”

McNamara’s retrospective take, as quoted from the documentary referenced above:

ROBERT MCNAMARA, FMR. U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: “No, it was just confusion, and events afterwards showed that our judgment that we had been attacked that day was wrong. It didn’t happen.”

The story of an attack that wasn’t an attack, crushed and traumatised an entire generation.

American citizens were drafted to the war and compelled to fight. Over 58,000 were killed.

Some say under 2 million people died in the Vietnam War. Some count nearly 4 million.

The entire population of New Zealand.

Waging War At Home

According to the Wikipedia page for the War on Terror:

“In December 2012, Jeh Johnson, the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, stated that the military fight will be replaced by a law enforcement operation when speaking at Oxford University.”

Throughout history the United States has used counterintelligence tactics to wage war against its own citizens when they congregate en masse to exercise their democratic rights. But particularly since 2011, there has been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of military-grade equipment flowing to police forces and brutal, physical oppression meted out against demonstrators and occupiers.

While it was assumed to be a profit-driven consequence of the privatisation of key aspects of the military, or just harsh policing tactics, there is now evidence that stormtrooper-like riot police serving as a domestic army is in fact in alignment with the strategic plans of the Department of Defense.

Thanks to a shocking new video released by The Intercept.

In the accompanying article, reporter Nick Turse notes the ‘dystopian’ nature of the vision portrayed and how it relates to current counter-terrorism efforts. But a closer look at the combination of audio and imagery betrays an even more sinister agenda.

At 2:09 in the video, riot police are seen grabbing a woman by the hair.  Graffiti on a wall in the background reads “Fight the Power”. Juxtaposed over this, the voiceover warns: “Social structures will be equally challenged if not dysfunctional…”

Lines of riot police square off against protesters holding green, white and red flags, reminiscent of the Palestinian flag. A store behind them is labelled “Pharmacie.” The voiceover continues “…as historic ways of life clash with modern living.”

Hacktivists who hack for social justice issues are equated with violent criminals and insurgents. At 2:35 a screenshot of an Anonymous video is shown as the voiceover says: “Digital security and trade will be increasingly threatened by sophisticated illicit economies and decentralised syndicates of crime..” leading to a photo of a masked black man in a tropical climate holding a huge shotgun and wearing a sling of bullets.

At 3:35, hundreds of riot cops are seen behind a barrier, while the audio says “the advice of doctrine from Sun Tzu to current field manuals has provided two fundamental options: avoid the cities or establish a cordon to either wait out the adversary or drain the swamp of non-combatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within. Even our counterinsurgency doctrine, honed in the cities of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, is inadequate to address the sheer scale of population in the future urban reality.”

So military counterinsurgency doctrine, designed for warzones, is lightweight by comparison to what the Army intends to unleash on urban cities. Reassuring.

But wait, there’s more.

At 4:19 we see riot police with shields, helmets, body armour and billy clubs fighting a crowd. The Oz-like voice says “Our soldiers will have to operate within these ecosystems with minimal disruption and flow.”

Riot police. Our soldiers. Let that sink in.

This video was produced by the U.S. Army. If riot police in urban areas are their soldiers this can lead to only one conclusion.

America is already making open warfare in their homeland, standard practice.

The U.S. Constitution forbids the use of military on U.S. soil. It appears those pulling the strings of The US Empire have figured out how to get around that: Use civilian police forces as “soldiers”.

They are so kind as to reiterate the point: at 4:30 the video nears its climax by showing masses of helmeted riot police. The voiceover states “We are facing a threat that requires us to redefine doctrine and the force in radically new and different ways..” Shot of hundreds more black-clad riot cops. “The future army will confront a highly sophisticated urban-centric threat…”

“Our soldiers.” “The future army.” “Redefining doctrine and the force.”

By unleashing hordes of domestic police forces armed to the teeth with military-grade weapons and equipment upon unarmed civilians on domestic soil, the U.S. Army isn’t just “redefining doctrine and the force in radically new and different ways” – it is redefining Constitutional Law, without the consent of the governed.

The US Empire is not the first to have armies of black-clad police forces attacking it’s own citizens.

Nazi Germany also had them. They too operated in tandem with military objectives and made a hunting ground of their own cities.

They were called the S.S.

Overextension – The Demise Of Empire

Neither Nazi Germany or The US Empire possess an achievable long-term objective. The stated end goal is always literally impossible to obtain, yet the wars wage on nonetheless.

Empirical governors always seek to expand, expand, expand. Or in terms of the acquisition and exfiltration of resources; to usurp and consume.

Each military misadventure overplays itself into the next endeavour.

Until the breadth of the empire becomes completely unsustainable and ultimately collapses.

“The defeat of Poland gave Hitler his common frontier with Russia. He had made war.  But it was not the war he wanted. His misjudgement of the temper of Britain and France had wrecked his plan. Before the great march of conquest in the east could begin, he must eliminate both France and Britain. Either that, or plunge Germany into a prolonged two-front war.” — World War II – Germany – Road To War

For America, the Pivot to Asia is the second front. The idea that The U.S. Empire could fight on both their East (against Iran and/or Russia) as well as their West (against China) and still win, is a huge stretch of the imagination.

The much-touted 40+ member Coalition of the Wiling was more fanfare than substance and use of the term has largely faded from public discourse. But even at its heights, in the wake of 9/11, the total amount of troops and resources contributed by the coalition was a tiny fraction of that required to sustain the entire war effort.

According to Wikipedia only 3 countries provided combat troops for the initial invasion, another 3 countries did not even have standing armies, and Costa Rica and the Solomon Islands declined to participate as they were apparently not even consulted about their inclusion in the list.

Wikipedia states:

It may also have been a zero sum game if not a net loss. Pundits labelled The Coalition of the Willing ‘The Coalition of The Billing‘ and ‘The Coalition of The Shilling‘ due to the large amounts of US aid being offered to some countries in order to secure participation.

While the United States currently enjoys military supremacy and thus alliance with many military partners and vassal states, that situation would change pretty quickly were The Empire to become weakened or exposed by fighting on both sides.

There is a long list of countries that The Empire has either overtly or covertly invaded or politically and economically subjugated, many with manufactured or installed pro-US puppet regimes that could easily be toppled by populaces which have not yet forgotten the crimes of the past, were the fortunes of The Empire to undergo substantial change.

Such an eventuality could make the Arab Spring look like a practice run.

Resilience

No sane person wants war. War is insanity by definition. Least of all a country that lost as many as 30 million of its people during World War II – more than every other country put together.

“There is a Soviet-era song titled ‘Do The Russians Want War?’ I think this is something the West does not understand about us… even for modern day Russians, who grew up at a peaceful time and didn’t witness World War II… there is no prospect more terrifying than war… my grandma used to tell me, ‘Remember, there is nothing more horrible than war.’ Every time I’d come to complain about something she’d tell me ‘That’s nothing. You can do anything. You can fix even the most disastrous of your mistakes but remember, there’s nothing worse in this world than war.’ Because war renders everything else irrelevant. When there is war, there’s neither good nor bad. There’s only war…

…the mere mention of war to a Russian makes our skin crawl. It gives us a sense of the world coming to an end, a sense of panic… once they realise that, if they ever do, they’ll be able to understand everything about us. We have lived through real war so many times. Not the movies or video games, the way they get to experience it. It’s not even the kind of war where they dispatch their troops elsewhere, not knowing what it’s like to fight a war at home. If they ever realise that, which I hope they will, they’re bound to feel guilty and ashamed of what they’re doing right now.” — Maria Zarakhova, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson speaking on RT.com’s ‘In The Now’

The most spectacular holiday of the Russian year is May 9th. The day that Germany conceded defeat and World War II was finally over. Even now, more than 70 years later, the end of that war is cause for celebration in Moscow. Not merely commemoration, but actual jubilance. Gratitude for peace.

Having never been a target of a large-scale ground invasion on their home soil in the 20th century, The US Empire is out of touch with the impact that the kind of devastation seen at Stalingrad has on a civilian population. The scars, the memories and the heritage, or how those scars are passed down through the generations both biologically in the physical composition of the offspring of those whom were literally starved by the war, and by word of mouth: Lest We Forget.

With each country invaded by US Empire, there has been increasing resistance, just as there was against Nazi Germany. If World War III progresses to armed conflict on Russian territory, that resistance will be raised to new heights unimaginable to the invaders.

In World War II, at Stalingrad every man, woman and child fought or aided in the fight. It was not merely an issue of a draft – or one military marching upon another. Every single resident fought tooth and nail against the invaders, for the future of their homeland.

According to Wikipedia’s retelling of the Battle of Stalingrad:

“Many women fought on the Soviet side, or were under fire. As General Chuikov acknowledged, “Remembering the defence of Stalingrad, I can’t overlook the very important question … about the role of women in war, in the rear, but also at the front. Equally with men they bore all the burdens of combat life and together with us men, they went all the way to Berlin.” At the beginning of the battle there were 75,000 women and girls from the Stalingrad area who had finished military or medical training, and all of whom were to serve in the battle. Women staffed a great many of the anti-aircraft batteries that fought not only the Luftwaffe but German tanks. Soviet nurses not only treated wounded personnel under fire but were involved in the highly dangerous work of bringing wounded soldiers back to the hospitals under enemy fire. Many of the Soviet wireless and telephone operators were women who often suffered heavy casualties when their command posts came under fire. Though women were not usually trained as infantry, many Soviet women fought as machine gunners, mortar operators, and scouts. Women were also snipers at Stalingrad. Three air regiments at Stalingrad were entirely female. At least three women won the title Hero of the Soviet Union while driving tanks at Stalingrad.”

That kind of experience remains with the population long after the war is over. They simply do not forget. The need for peace, for sanity, is urgent and enduring.

Even the citizens of the West who haven’t personally experienced war on their home soil within many generations, want peace. Some 36,000,000 people around the world marched against the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Unfortunately, mass demonstrations, while very much in the spirit of democracy, seem consistently all but ignored by the political hierarchy of The US Empire. While they may give the causes of activists lip service in campaign speeches, seldom does any action follow other than blatant tactics of oppression and suppression reminiscent of many of the other countries who they then hypocritcally decry for a supposed lack of respect for human rights.

Inevitability

The escalation of the War seems inevitable, because it is so closely following the blueprint of the past.

The biggest indicator of impending conflict is the imposition of economic sanctions.

Since the dawn of time, trade sanctions precede war.

From ForeignPolicy.com:

“As a blunt tool of diplomacy, the concept of sanctions has been around at least from the time of the ancient Greeks, when Athens imposed a trade embargo on its neighbor Megara in 432 B.C. Since then, there has been a long history of countries blockading their enemies to compel a change in behavior. But how did this tactic morph into today’s “targeted” or “smart” sanctions — measures such as arms embargoes, asset freezes, and travel bans on key individuals and organizations — now aimed at Iran and Syria? They may be more humane and high-tech than a flotilla at sea, but are sanctions any more effective today than they were 2,400 years ago? After all, Athens’s embargo didn’t cow Megara into submission — it helped trigger the Peloponnesian War.”

As stated in Saddam Hussein – The Truth documentary:

“Sanctions and war are linked to each other. If you go against sanctions, you should know – nothing against sanctions – but if you do that, you should know that there is only war left.”

Of course, some may argue that sanctions are active warfare. Certainly the method of murder – economic or military – made no difference to the half a million Iraqi children who died as a direct result of sanctions in the 90s.

Sanctions imposed by vampires, held in place even after the premises under which they were imposed had been proven to be false.

From the same documentary:

“In 1990 the U.N. voted for a strict economic blockade. Officially the embargo would remain in place until Saddam’s arsenal had been entirely destroyed. U.N. inspectors forced the Iraqis to cooperate and soon became convinced that Iraq no longer posed a real threat. And yet the sanctions were maintained…

…”There’s something comfortable about having him in the box of sanctions and a regime of international inspection… that we had come to accept”…

…”We knew we were in a losing battle, that sanctions were going to erode to the point where eventually they become a joke… if you lift sanctions you break containment, if you break containment you no longer have Saddam Hussein under control.”

Just as war relies on pretext, so does sanctions.

Polishing pretext is what politicians do best.

The Two Types Of Secretary Of State

Some Secretaries of State order pizza and directly engage in diplomacy.

Some starve entire populations and then seek to justify it. Some overtly advocate for war.

There is the statesman and the war hawk. The former acts to prevent war, the latter acts as a cheerleader for the military industrial complex, egging them on to their next conquest and has no qualms about getting their hands dirty.

Or laughing about it.

All the while, amassing top-tier military and corporate contacts and benefactors.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, there is somewhat of a chequered history to Secretaries of State becoming President.

They recount the history of the six prior Secretaries to do so:

So, Hillary would have been the seventh ex Secretary of State to become President, and the first to do so since 1845.

The last, as stated above, was James Buchanan. The reason the Christian Science Monitor describes him as the “worst US chief executive of all time” is because he was a one-term President who presided over the secession of states that led to the American Civil War.

The election of Donald Trump to President of the United States has been, to say the least, highly contentious. But given the hawkish international policies promoted by Clinton, it may have saved the world much blood and pain.

Now only one day after the election, no one really knows what is coming. There is almost universal dread among U.S. activists, due to Trump’s divisive domestic agenda. But among many others, there is genuine hope for a rebalancing of international power, away from the perennial misadventures of Empire – a profound change on the world stage. Only time will tell if President Trump will run the military industrial complex, or if the military industrial complex will run President Trump.

Building Bridges

So what builds bridges to peace? Failed Presidential bid aside, Clinton’s post-‘Stronger Together‘ slogan was ‘Love trumps hate‘.

The foundations of love are understanding and empathy.

Geopolitically, this requires an acknowledgement and respect for cultures foreign to our own.

Such respect for culture is not unprecedented in contemporary American history. It has been achieved most poignantly, through the arts. One example is Van Cliburn, a young American man who travelled to Moscow, where he earned the admiration of the Russian populace with a series of spectacular performances that won him an inaugural international Tchaikovsky competition for concert pianists.

The feat was considered so significant that he returned to a ticker-tape parade in New York and his subsequent studio recordings outsold even Elvis Presley.

In an interview with PBS, Cliburn distanced himself from a 1958 Time Magazine cover that had audaciously claimed that he’d ‘conquered the Russians‘. Cliburn states:

“I am so grateful because they were wonderful to me. They were such great audiences… I didn’t conquer anything. As a matter of fact, they conquered my heart.”

That kind of humility, coupled with a common humanity is how we, the citizenry, can build bridges between our nations. To boast of conquest is hollow and temporary. Even the strongest bodybuilder cannot flex impressively forever – age will eventually defy them. But to forge a friendship, an alliance based on mutual respect, is to truly win.

In 2004 Cliburn was awarded the Russian ‘Order of Friendship‘. The medal celebrates foreign nationals whose efforts strengthen international relations.

Any person can wage destruction with ease, even a toddler can. But to build something lasting, profound and historic, that spans beyond one’s personal lifetime… such as cultural understanding and friendship… or to inspire unity… that is truly remarkable.

The Nobel Peace Prize was originally intended for recipients who had “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Unfortunately it has become little more than a status symbol for those who wield great power and often with limited (if not overtly detrimental) outcomes.

Better results come from a more pure motivation – love and genuine well-wishing – a heartfelt yearning to find common ground, not merely though diplomacy but through cultural exchange, tolerance and celebration.

Thus it is not only the leaders of our countries that must rise to find solutions and reach an outstretched hand, but the very citizens themselves.

When they do, let us promote such efforts by acknowledging, encouraging and rewarding them.

For courage is contagious.

Written by Suzie Dawson

Twitter: @Suzi3D

Official Website: Suzi3d.com

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[Update/January 2018] This post is now available at my Steemit blog