After Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now the destruction of the Syrian Republic, full spectrum punditry, i.e. from Establishment to anti-Establishment chatterboxes, have begun again the ritual handwringing with which the product of hedge fund imperialism is decried.
Since Christopher Clark’s bestselling apology for the Anglo-American Empire (2012) as well as the death of faux Metternich, Henry Kissinger (2023) and his twin, the Polish-American Castlereagh, Zbigniew Brzezinski (2017), the leitmotif of the “sleepwalker” as agent of realpolitik has been amplified to absurd volumes.
Some sobriety might come from more attentive listening to Wagner’s Lohengrin (reputedly Adolf Hitler’s favourite), where the greatest threat was the “Ungarntod” against which the hero is to lead defense for the Duke of Brabant. The 10th century in which the story is set is not unlike our own– by design it would seem. (Lohengrin is mainly remembered — without attribution– by the wedding march that survives today in the repertoire of church and screen.) Brabant is part of what is now Belgium, where in Brussels the pretender, Ursula von der Leyen, aspires to repel the Hungarian threat symbolized by Mr Viktor Orban. The “sleepwalking” thesis should be rejected. While the great masses of us are compelled to suffer insomnia, it is a serious mistake to believe that those who make the death decisions are asleep and know not what they do.
First of all the 20th century already turned war into an autonomous industrial sector. Austrian political ideologue Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) did nothing less with his concept of “creative destruction” than theorize Business as permanent warfare in the economy as a whole.
Hence the war industry has no interest in a peaceful or stable day after. Schumpeter was only one of numerous intellectuals from the defunct Austro-Hungarian empire to infest Anglo-American academia. Together with those whose special services supported the creation of the atomic bomb, like Edward Teller and John von Neumann, one could say that while the corporal from Braunau led the vanguard against the Soviet Union, Austro-Hungarians provided the science for bombing people and economics for bombing workers and the poor. The Popular Front was consistently and vigorously opposed by reactionary intellectuals from Central Europe in the service of the Anglo-American Empire.
In his Modern Economics (1967), Lorie Tarshis makes the point that until the Great Depression of the 1930s no serious attention had been given by economists to the consequences of economic failure for the population as a whole.
What he meant by failure was the inability of the economy to generate the necessary output to satisfy the needs of the population. Tarshis’s attempt to translate the economics of John Maynard (Lord) Keynes into university text in 1947 (Elements of Economics) was so utterly defeated that not even second-hand copies of his textbook are available today. The canonical Principles of Economics, substituted in a “Nacht und Nebelaktion” led by William F. Buckley, against Tarshis and the very notion of “new economics”, established the obsequious MIT don, Paul Samuelson as the Aquinas of American capitalism with whom nearly every living private or public functionary has been inoculated. Thus the economy and international relations were redefined as the product of systemic somnambulism, i.e. the so-called “neo-classical synthesis”. George Carlin put it bluntly when he said that they call it the “American Dream” because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Those who own the polities we have been taught to accept as our governments or as state-actors on the international stage never sleep. It is we who are the somnambulists, not those who rule. The disclaimers poured over our sleeping heads– assertions that there were or are only plans of action but none for after action– are distractions. Since the vast majority have been taught to believe that because in theory they could also one day be rich, the actions of the truly rich are best understood as vicarious consumption by all of us “rich-in-waiting”. So our insomnia is denied by our willingness to believe that our real powerlessness would naturally create the same “creative destruction” as that of the allegedly sleepwalking rulers. “Sleepwalking” is just another word for denial of responsibility for actions for which there have been, are and forever will be purpose and intention. By arguing that the actions of the ruling psychopathic class were short-sighted or sleep-induced, the illusion is maintained that stated policy is the same as unstated policy. If one follows the logic of this alleged planlessness then even the demand for a different policy can be rejected. In other words, no matter what policy is pursued– so the logic of somnabulism– no other policy could be expected to produce intended results. Improvisation stems from absolution.
The function of public policy debate in the media is to indoctrinate the public not to present facts for deliberation. Nitze’s NSC 68 and Kennan’s policy assessments were never introduced into public debate until long after they were implemented.
The nature of the wars or war itself has changed to the extent that it is scaleable terrorism against civilian populations and theft of resources, in short corporate brigandry protected by dubious flag-bearing (branded) entities.
The apparent admission that there was no plan for the fall of Assad, Qaddafi or Hussein is an appearance, a manifestation of stated policy intended to distract from unstated policy. The war started in Sarajevo in 1914 successfully blocked the South Slav corridor linking the Middle East and Indian Ocean Basin with Central Europe. The destruction of the Yugoslav Federation in 1991 continued that policy.
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Former Yugoslavia during war front lines in 1992 – Flag map of yugoslav wars (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Who is actually controlling the oil extracted and stolen from Syria under US flag? What is Erdogan’s Turkey? There is an enduring contradiction between the various bases for national self-determination. Why would those who rule Turkey object to a Kurdish state? Because their military organisation is stronger than those of Iran, Iraq and Syria and therefore capable of suppressing the territorial threats of such separatism? Or because the owners of the US have been subsidizing Kurdish separatism as another weapon against Pan-Arabism (since Kurds are not Arabs or Turks but more closely related to Persians). Recall that the historical enmity of the region is the Turkish – Persian antagonism. The Zionists appeared in the region as Khazars, cloaked as European settlers but actually ruled by Ottoman bureaucrats like Ben-Gurion.
None of these forces have more interest in a flag than the owners of a ship registered in Monrovia or Panama.
The post-WW2 era returned us to warfare as organized crime. The defeats of the independence movements by 1989 ended the two centuries of wars for popular sovereignty and national self-determination. Now all wars are merely extensions of hedge fund speculation and cash flow management. The bureaucrats who produce reports of impending chaos are perhaps unwitting, but true believers in the exercise of power for its own sake. It is we who are clearly asleep, not they.
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This article was originally published on Seek Truth From Facts Foundation.
Dr. T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket between the cradles of Heine and Saramago. He is also the author of Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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