Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Time Mag Eases Americans into Reality


The only time I read Time magazine is in a doctor’s waiting room, but yesterday I asked to take the December 19th issue home with me because what could have been a standard year-end article turned out to be revolutionary. Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, breaks with the MSM’s failure to tell the world like it is to the American people. Titled ‘An Uneasy Path Abroad’ it confirms in soothing terms everything being written by Pepe Escobar, Paul Craig Roberts and others, about America’s declining position in the world.

I don’t know how most of my readers will see this, but I believe it marks a watershed: wrapped in Christmas paper, it outlines the new international reality after decades of failure by the American press to inform readers about the world beyond our seas.  Reviewing all the pluses in America’s arsenal, such as a young work force and the presence of the world’s biggest tech companies, it then admits: “Foreign policy is a different story. American power is on the wane, power being the ability to force others to do things they otherwise wouldn’t do.”Bremmer admits there are now “a growing number of emerging powers (with) more than enough power to ignore what America wants” - and horror of horrors! - “even to block U.S. plans they don’t like”.

Though the MSM has been denigrating the BRICS countries since they appeared on the scene a few years ago, Bremmer reveals to the American people that “In 2014 they launched a $50 million development bank, which together with China’s develop-ment bank and an expanding list of regional lending institutions makes borrowers less dependent on Western lenders.”

As for America’s European vassals born with the end of WWII, like the US they are “unhappy with Vladimir Putin and his  assault on Ukraine” (note the mild ‘unhappy’), but “Russia is not the Soviet Union. It’s not a global military power.” Bremmer should have elaborated on the fact that Russia, unlike the Soviet Union, is not Communist, and therefore we have no ideological reason to oppose it. However he does admit that: “European nations have far more economic exposure to Russia (another understatement for a region dependent on Russian gas to keep warm in winter) than America does.” Bremmer appears to be preparing Americans for the day when Europe declares its independence from Washington, although that day seems much farther off than grownups in the room would wish.
Blaming cooling Atlantic relations on things like the Merkel spying incident, and foreseeing more distancing from the torture report, Bremmer reveals a less obvious transformation when he admits that US influence in Europe has flowed through Britain.  As that country loosens ties with the EU, he says, US influence in Europe will lessen.

Acknowledging that the rise of China “will fray US ties with allies in Asia” he admits that “the American public won’t support a lasting US commitment to solve what are perceived to be other peoples’ problems.”  Citing numerous polls, Bremmer announces that “reliable public support is no longer there” (for an ambitious, expensive foreign policy) “and the world knows it.” Bremmer admits that ‘dollar dominance is on the wane” returning once again to China’s financial clout, crashing the wall of silence that greeted the creation of the “$40 billion Silk Road Fund designed to extend Chinese commercial influence across South and Central Asia and into Europe.”  Identified in his Wiki biography as a hard-edged Republican partisan who following World War II wanted the US to back the Nationalist government of Chang Kai-Check against Mao, Henry Luce must be turning over in his grave as the magazine he founded admits: “Nor will it be easy for the US to build greater support for market-driven capitalism, as China continues to demonstrate the growth potential of the state-driven variety”.

Turning to the Middle East quagmire, regarding efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, Bremmer notes much too mildly that: “The Saudis are not working as hard as they could to track funding and arms that militants from ISIS receive” and “even in areas where the US and Saudis have shared interests, the two countries are no longer closely coordinating their policies.”
Returning yet again to China, thus showing the extent to which it is his main concern, Bremmer concludes “Globalization will continue to spread new ideas, speed the flow of information, lift nations out of poverty (sic) and drive global consumption.  But it’s less likely than before to promote American values and an American worldview.”

Bremmer’s article is a salute to Pepe Escobar and Paul Craig Roberts among others, who day after day keep readers informed of what is really going on in the world.  I want particularly to recommend PCR’s latest contribution for its link to an in-depth analysis by an author identified as Larchmonter 445, about Russia-China military and economic cooperation in the face of what PRC believes is the US’s plan to destroy both countries in turn, using nuclear weapons. The article appeared on ’The Vineyard of the Saker’, which has half a dozen language versions and is planning one by Muslims. 

That Bremmer’s article should appear in what for almost a century has systematically promoted a conservative worldview to a vast American readership, is astonishing.  (Time was founded in 1923, and it was Luce who coined the expression ‘The American Century’ in 1941.) It suggests that as the American century wanes, the magazine that accompanied it no longer promotes interventionism, recommending instead that the United States calm down and live with the new world taking shape instead of destroying it.  

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