By Telma Luzzani on April 12, 2020
The inevitable decline of American supremacy has been predicted for many years. But how to prove it? Many arguments seemed to be born more from an expression of desire than a real possibility. Today, there is no longer any doubt. Strategists like Henry Kissinger, a key politician in empire-building and an expert like few others in the labyrinths of power, recognize the irremediable end of American hegemony.
The dramatic accounts that Covid-19 is planting in different parts of the American territory confirm this hypothesis. And not because of the very high numbers of deaths, nor because of the unforgivable lack of basic inputs in a country of such wealth, nor because of the deficiency and cruelty of its public health system. These are just consequences of savage capitalism that has very carelessly taken over the world’s establishment, which is, as is known, in favor of social Darwinism and the survival of the rich.
In his latest article, “Coronavirus Pandemic to Alter World Order Forever,” published on April 3 in The Wall Street Journal, Kissinger openly expresses his two greatest fears. After Covid-19, will it be possible to “safeguard the principles of the liberal world order”? “Will a divided country like the United States be able to lead the transition to the post-Covid order?”
It is not by chance that the text begins with a longing for the “distant past” of the Marshall Plan and the Manhattan Project, the programs that, precisely, allowed the United States to catapult itself as a world power in the second half of the 20th century. The first one to help the growth of Western Europe and the second one to develop the atomic bomb.
The contrast to that time with the present day is clear. Unlike back then, today the United States cannot offer the rest of the planet any civilizing ideal except financial and environmental predation. In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, it lacks leaders capable of making good diagnoses and, therefore, an authoritative voice to propose a collective way out. What Kissinger perceives is the loss, even of that symbolic force, typical of leaderships, which for decades made the world believe that the Americans were the only ones capable of solving the chaos.
Now demonized rival countries like Russia and China have to help the US and President Donald Trump in person – not by twitter – had to go out and thank them!
Kissinger, an accomplice to so many genocides, points to the heart of the dilemma. The empire was built on “the belief that its institutions can foresee calamities, stop their impact and restore stability. When the Covid-19 pandemic ends, the institutions of many countries will be perceived as having failed,” he wrote. “The final test will be whether public confidence in the ability of Americans to govern themselves is maintained.”
Without being explicit, the 96-year-old strategist admits to the end of supremacy, as a lesser evil, a world co-government where the United States maintains some voice. The “political and economic turmoil that has been unleashed by the virus could last for generations and not even the United States can do it alone. A vision and program of global collaboration must be combined,” he said. In the meantime, there is an enormous danger.
The attempt to conceal the imperial collapse – as President Donald Trump seems to be doing these days – can take criminal forms. In the midst of an unprecedented pandemic catastrophe, the Pentagon announced the launch of a dangerous military operation against Venezuela, which adds to the severe blockade already suffered by that country from the US and its allies.
If the invention of proclaiming Juan Guaidó as a false president was accompanied by 50 of the 200 countries in the world, this adventure, according to US figures, has the backing of only 20 nations. An act of bravado that does nothing but confirms the decline of American leadership and was harshly criticized by Russia last April 9. “After studying the content of Washington’s initiative – says the Russian Foreign Ministry’s communiqué – we believe that it does not deserve a serious response”.
Kissinger’s text is a desperate appeal to the masters of the world for fear that something will get out of hand. It is up to the rest of us, the powerful countries, and not so much to be the containment field for the panic of the global establishment. It is now time to defend, to the last consequences, the principles of peace, humanism and non-interference. It is time for sanity.
Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau