The American neo-conservatives predicted the 21st century would be a «New American Century». Instead, it is becoming a «New Chinese Century», with the United States still believing, wrongly, that it is the «leader of the free world» and a «super power» [...]
Ever since the end of World War II, the United States, rightly or wrongly, but most of the time, wrongly, has fancied itself as the «world’s policeman». Even a disastrous and costly military intervention in Southeast Asia did not deter the United States from acting as the chief arbiter of what governments were «in» and which were «out» as evidenced by Central Intelligence Agency interloping in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Haiti, and Colombia. Two military interventions in Iraq and a U.S.-led military campaign directed against Yugoslavia were not enough to pry the United States from its self-appointed role as the chief «global cop». In fact, American neoconservatives continued to fanaticize about the United States leading the world into a post-Cold War «new American century».
The United States under Donald Trump now resembles a disabled policeman who was forced to retire on disability after being injured, not in the line of duty, but by engaging in self-destructive piques of bravado. The United States has abandoned internationalism as witnessed by Washington’s withdrawal from the free trade Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Paris climate agreement. The United Kingdom’s decision to depart the European Union in the Brexit referendum has put the final nail in the coffin of Britain’s status as a minor «superpower».
Until another nation steps forward to claim the title of chief world cop, the world will be subjected, as coined by the New Testament’s Book of Matthew, to «wars and rumors of wars».
Arising from a combination of Donald Trump’s tweets and outbursts about subjects ranging from Qatar to Taiwan and NATO to Palestine, old border disputes and diplomatic rivalries are beginning to flare up. The Trump administration also appears to be unwilling to fill a number of vacancies in the State Department, a development that has added to a de facto American hands-off approach to many simmering international disputes.
Trump’s siding with the Saudi Arabian-led bloc of Arab and Muslim nations in its confrontation with Qatar has resulted in Trump’s Saudi and other Gulf allies demanding that Qatar close down Al Jazeera and other media operations in Doha that are out of favor with Qatar’s neighbor oligarchic potentates. The Saudi-contrived demands of Qatar’s government, in return for a lifting of Saudi and United Arab Emirates sanctions against Doha, amount to nothing less than total political and economic subjugation of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, which is akin to Saudi Arabia’s de facto colonization of Bahrain. In the past, the United States would have simply ordered the Saud regime to cease and desist in making threats against neighboring countries. Saudi action against Qatar has had wide-ranging effects in the region, which include renewed border tensions between Qatar and Bahrain over some largely uninhabited islands, as well as between Eritrea and Djibouti, on whose border Qatar had provided a peacekeeping force.
In 2001, the International Court of Justice awarded many of the disputed Hawar Islands, which lie closer to Qatar than to Bahrain, to the Bahrainis. As a consolation prize, the world court awarded Janan Island to Qatar. The decision never sat well with Qatar. As the Bahrainis were announcing a mega-development project for the largely-uninhabited Hawar Islands, the pro-Saudi press in the Middle East began writing stories about Qatari intelligence operations directed against Bahrain. Press items included the interest shown by Qatari intelligence in the military deployments and readiness of Bahraini forces stationed in the Hawar Islands.
After Eritrea and Djibouti sided with Saudi Arabia in its diplomatic dispute with Qatar, Qatari peacekeeping troops were withdrawn from the Eritrean-Dijbouti border. The result was Eritrean troops quickly occupying the Doumeira mountain border area, which is claimed by Djibouti. The border dispute between Eritrea and Djibouti began in 2008, when Eritrean troops occupied the Doumeira mountain and dug in. Qatar sent some 450 peacekeepers to patrol the disputed zone in 2010. With their hasty departure, the border has become a renewed flash point in the volatile Horn of Africa.
Although the African Union got involved in the border dispute, the U.S. State Department, once a nexus for geopolitical status quo enthusiasts, remained quiet. It is unusual for the State Department not to comment on such border disputes. Not only does the United States maintain the large U.S. Central Command airbase at Al-Udeid in Qatar, but it also has a major military presence at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.
China, the power that is eclipsing the United States in international importance as an arbiter of disputes, is building a military base in Djibouti. It is also establishing a maritime port in Gwadar in Pakistan, from which it can deploy naval forces to the Persian Gulf.
Elsewhere in Africa, a border dispute over Lake Nyasa has erupted after a 50-year dormancy between Malawi and Tanzania. A dispute between Cameroon and Nigeria over the Bakassi Peninsula also shows signs of re-erupting. At issue are natural gas deposits under Lake Nyasa and oil in the Bakassi region. Sudan and Egypt are, once again, bickering over control of the Halayeb triangle border region, currently under Egyptian control.
Two NATO allies, Croatia and Slovenia, are awaiting a decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on its decision in a border dispute. Croatia has accused the Slovenians of conspiring with the judges. Croatia also likely distrusts the United States and its Slovenian-born First Lady Melania Trump for possibly influencing the court’s decision in favor of Slovenia. Mrs. Trump’s parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, have visited the White House and they are in a perfect position to deliver to President Trump, «personal» messages from the Slovenian government. The court’s decision is expected on June 29, 2017.
The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union has re-triggered sovereignty issues between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar and Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands and Dependencies and British Antarctic Territory. Britain also saw a stinging rebuke over its treatment of the Chagos Islanders in its unilaterally-created British Indian Ocean Territory. In the late 1960’s, the people of the Chagos Islands, which include the island of Diego Garcia, were deported from the islands to Mauritius and Seychelles to make way for a U.S. military base on Diego Garcia. In a 94 to 15 vote, the United Nations General Assembly ordered the case of the legal status of the Chagos Islands to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. If the court rules against Britain, the United States will have to make a new long-term lease deal with Mauritius, the original legal administrator of the Chagos Islands, to keep the base at Diego Garcia.
In the UN vote, Britain’s soon-to-be-former European Union allies abstained. The United Kingdom, backed by the Trump administration, saw NATO and EU members France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Estonia, Latvia, and Greece abstain. Canada, a «Five Eyes» intelligence partner of the United States and Britain, also abstained. Voting with the United States and Britain and against Mauritius were a collection of countries that are nothing more than beggars for U.S. and British military aid: Afghanistan, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Israel, Lithuania, Montenegro, and South Korea, in addition to the other Five Eyes spy partners Australia and New Zealand. The Maldives no vote is based on a competing claim for the Chagos Islands by Maldives, which views Diego Garcia and the 64 other islands as the southern part of the Maldives chain. Mauritius claims sole sovereignty over the same islands. The eclipse of U.S. and British dominance in the Indian Ocean sets the stage for several conflicts over islands and sea beds.
The «Trump Effect» of a diminished U.S. role in international affairs is also being felt in South America, where Ecuador has irritated Peru by building a Trump-style border wall on its frontier with its neighbor to the east and south. Peru claims the wall is illegal because it violates a 1998 agreement prohibiting border construction within 33 feet from the border. Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border has also prompted Botswana to start construction on an electrified fence along its border with Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s Deputy Home Minister Obedingwa Mguni lashed out at Botswana’s decision, telling the Zimbabwe press: «We should not copy the United States of America’s idea of putting a border wall on its border with Mexico when we are actually one people who are related».
There are other long-simmering border disputes and secessionist movements emerging from «cold» status to hot conflicts in Asia, the Arctic, the Pacific region, and the Caribbean. As U.S. State Department dominance fades, in addition to Halayeb, Bakassi, and Chagos, the world will soon see headlines concerning flashpoints having other unfamiliar names – Ladakh, Baltistan, Riau, Otong Java, Rotuma, Chuuk, Pemba, the Rif, Cabinda, and Oduduwa – and those with more familiar names – Biafra, Zanzibar, Scotland, and Catalonia.
The American neo-conservatives predicted the 21st century would be a «New American Century». Instead, it is becoming a «New Chinese Century», with the United States still believing, wrongly, that it is the «leader of the free world» and a «super power». As Mao Zedong once stated, the United States is a «paper tiger». And Mao had another prediction: «The day will come when the paper tigers will be wiped out». That day is now upon us.
Originally published on 2017-06-25
About the author: Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club.
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
It is apparent given the timelines and the lack of time given to verifying the validity of accusations concerning the gas attack in Homs, Syria, that plans had already been coordinated for such an attack. Watching the mainstream media the viewer receives the impression from the wording of the announcers reports and questions for the “experts” that the matter was already decided in favour of the U.S. military strike on the airbase. I see pictures of Colin Powell at the UN holding up glossy photos of supposed chemical weapons manufacturing plants.It demonstrates to a high degree how easily manipulated Trump ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]Save
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
Although my grandfather, Josip Broz Tito, “gave” the name “Macedonia” to one of the six constituent republics of Yugoslavia, it is obvious that this act did not aim to create irredentist claims with its neighbors, with which Yugoslavia developed friendly relations and fruitful cooperation.For many years Skopje’s authorities had been presenting maps of “Greater Macedonia,” extending “the geographical and ethnic border of Macedonia” into Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia and Greece. Is that the model of regional cooperation that our friends in Skopje preach to follow?The European Union, the United Nations and the international community have invested considerable political and economic capital ...
Trump the Anti-Globalist Champion of the People?Many Americans who’ve been supporting President-elect Trump see him as the populist leader who will save America from ruin. Trump supporters have been unfairly marginalized and pigeonholed by the MSM broad stroke as white supremacy extremists bent on plunging America back into a new Jim Crowism era and a second Civil War along with a growing number of angry, uneducated, disenfranchised blue collar, mostly white male redneck loser types. Despite a spike in racist graffiti and vandalism since the election, this gross overgeneralization is the Hillary/Soros/Rothschild/MSM’s desperate attempt to discredit Trump’s victory while Soros ...
During the last thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, the world, renamed by the West into a “Euro-Atlantic” one, began to change drastically, giving itself a completely different substance than Washington and the “renewed Europe” organized by America wanted it to be. It began to swell with a completely different meaning, the balance of forces in it began to change, and the East, together with Russia and China, announced that a new future was coming. Even India, Iran, Brazil, and South Africa have grown economically and militarily and politically aware of their place in modern history, demonstrating to ...
The political situation in Turkey is clearly dramatic, but it is also equally complicated. Turkish President Erdogan has succeeded in securing levels of power unique in the nation′s history. But is this situation really unique? No – for 15 years, the father of the nation Ataturk ruled alone over the early Republic, which was a one-party nation at the time. Only his untimely death in 1938 deprived him of that power.Up to that point, Ataturk alone ruled over every conceivable dimension of domestic and foreign policy. Even clothing and music were tailored to his ideas. The aim was the creation ...
The genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge began forty years ago this month. Their rise to power was inseparable from US intervention.On April 17, 1975, Khmer Rouge (KR) forces stormed Phnom Penh and reestablished Cambodia as Democratic Kampuchea — a supposedly self-sufficient, entirely agrarian society. Resetting the clock to “Year Zero,” the KR forced urban dwellers to the countryside, and began to “purify” Cambodia through a genocidal purge of intellectuals and minority groups. By the time the slaughter came to an end in 1979 — after Vietnam invaded Cambodia and removed the KR from power — some 1.7 million people (21 percent ...
Part IPart II Part IIIThe Croatian (Illyrian) Revival Movement until a victory of the national (South Slavic) language (1847)The Austrian Emperor, Ferdinand V (1835–1848), on January 11th, 1843 issued the order of prohibition of the use of the Illyrian name and the Illyrian coat of arms. The prohibition was officially justified with the explanation that such a measure was necessary for the purpose to restrain further political struggle and attacks from the Illyrian Party against the mađaroni and the ethnic Hungarians in Croatia-Slavonia. At the same time, the Ottoman authorities required from the Habsburg Emperor to forbid the public use of ...
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) was created by Pax Americana to provide a cover for CIA agents under the pretext of helping the 3rd World. US Imperialism has to do some good or its potential targets would not open their doors to intelligence agents posing as do gooders, so USAID was created.Today the USAID is headed by Gayle Smith, formerly the “Special Advisor” to President Barack Obama and Senior Director of the National Security Council. To put it simply, Gayle Smith is one of the top “spooks” in the USA, someone who told the CIA what to do.Today ...
The edifice of the post-1991 world order is collapsing right before our eyes. President Putin’s decision to give a miss to the Auschwitz pilgrimage, right after his absence in Paris at Charlie festival, gave it the last shove. It was good clean fun to troll Russia, as long as she stayed the course. Not anymore. Russia broke the rules.Until now, Russia, like a country bumpkin in Eton, tried to belong. It attended the gathering of the grandees where it was shunned, paid its dues to European bodies that condemned it, patiently suffered ceaseless hectoring of the great powers and irritating baiting of the East European small-timers alike. But something broke there. The lad does ...
Watching the Ken Burns-Lynn Novick 18-hour series, “The Vietnam War,” is an emotional experience. Whether you served in the US military during the war or marched in the streets to end it, you cannot remain untouched by this documentary. The battle scenes are powerful, the stories of US veterans and Vietnamese soldiers who fought on both sides of the war compelling.The toll in human terms caused by the war is staggering. Nearly 58,000 Americans and 2 to 3 million Vietnamese, many of them civilians, were killed in the war. Untold numbers were wounded. Many US veterans of the war suffer ...
A highlight of Peter II’s 1942 official state visit to the U.S. was his speech before the U.S. Congress. That speech solidified and affirmed Yugoslavia as an ally of the U.S. during World War II.Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had issued a statement in support of Peter II and the Yugoslav government.FDR’s message of April 8, 1941 emphasized that the U.S. would provide aid and assistance to Yugoslavia:“The people of the United States have been profoundly shocked by the unprovoked and ruthless aggression upon the people of Yugoslavia. The Government and ...
Historical backgroundAfter the failure of the interwar League of Nations to prevent international crises and military conflicts of the 1930s which finally culminated in the next global war, the major Allied states (the USA, the USA, the UK, and China) agreed in Moscow in October 1943 to create a new, more functional, and improved international peace-keeping organization after the war under a new name of the United Nations Organization (the UNO). In other words, the UNO has evolved from a wining coalition of countries fighting against European Nazism and fascism in WWII. Following further negotiations at Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta, ...
The massive artillery bombardment of the peoples of the Donbass, that has been raining down shells and fire on them since Christmas, is a war crime of horrific proportions designed to terrorise the people and bring their refusal to be subject to the NATO-installed regime in Kiev to an end. It is also becoming clear that it has a political purpose, which is to increase anti-Russian, pro-NATO propaganda among the Ukrainian people to influence them to vote to join NATO in a referendum, the consequences of which will be dramatic because a vote for NATO will be a vote for ...
One of the most controversial, influential, and well-known revolutionary organizations in the world was the Irish Republican Army (the IRA) considered to be both patriotic and terrorists.The FeniansIt is of extreme debate the question of its real origin but it is mostly accepted the standpoint that the origins of the IRA are in the Irish Republican Brotherhood (the IRB) or popularly known as the Fenians as it grew out of the Fenian movement.[1] The name is coming from the Irish armed forces in legendary times. The Fenian movement was founded as both the Fenian Brotherhood in the USA by John ...
The ongoing crisis in Ukraine and unseemly role of Poland in its instigation and development makes us take another look at the historical context of the Polish-Ukrainian relations. We will focus on dramatic repressions of the Ukrainian minorities in Eastern Poland in 1921-1939 at the territories annexed by Jozef Piłsudski’s government from the Soviet Russia according to Peace of Riga 1921, which eventually triggered ultra-Nationalist Ukrainian terror against the Poles during the WWII (culminating in massacres in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943-1944).Poland, which used to be a part of the Russian Empire, emerged at the European political map in November ...
Is it a coincidence?In recent history, from the Vietnam war to the present, the month of March has been chosen by Pentagon and NATO military planners as the “best month” to go to war.With the exception of the War on Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO and allied led military operations over a period of more than half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.The Ides of March (Idus Martiae) is a day in the Roman calendar which broadly ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSaveSave
