International Relations (IR) theory demonstrates that the regime of the United States, including competing presidential candidates, are irrational and do not understand their own country's interests.
An essay has been spotted getting re-blogged at Fort Russ - a recently founded media criticism blog. It looks at differing IR approaches and ultimately concludes that the United States is more interested in protecting the national interests of the State of Israel than the United States. This analysis was originally published at the Center for Syncretic Studies (CSS), a small geopolitics think tank, and was authored by academic activist Joaquin Flores.
Syria was the main focus of the analysis, as Flores dissected how the US involvement in the conflict is harmful to the US's own national interests and exposed how the only possible beneficiary is Israel. For years, there has already been a respected view among scholars in the realist school of International Relations that Israel serves no valuable role in US strategy and is solely a liability. John Mearsheimer and Strephen Walt were the pioneers of such a thesis, and attracted much controversy by publishing it.
While offering no substantive benefit for US interests, the alliance with the apartheid regime in Israel and its goal of land-grabbing and occupation of Arab lands draws the US into a costly and pointless international scandal. It stains the image of the US among all the other countries of the Middle East - some of whom the US actually depends on for its energy supplies.
The US does not actually rely on Israel for anything and gains nothing by being allied to the Tel Aviv regime, making US actions to support Israel essentially suicidal. Flores notes how unusual this relationship is, stating, "lack of sovereign control over foreign policy is typically seen in the dependency model and is normal for weaker states subject to control by stronger states", yet the US is stronger than Israel and seems to be led around like a mule by this smaller state. The consequences of the US relationship with a small parasite state, which offers nothing to the US in return for US blood sacrifices in the region, could only entail the death of the US regime alongside Israel.
Flores' chilling analysis explained that the US is destined to defeat, because its supposedly hawkish global strategy constantly undermines US interests and causes devastating setbacks for US national security at every level. Selected key points from Flores' analysis:
Recent statements by US officials and candidates for office are indeed not only subjectively obnoxious but also objectively illegal by the standards of international law.
...this [interventionist] posturing... would actually result in catastrophic defeat for the Empire in the Syrian theatre, if words were translated into actions...
...US media attempts to paint Russia’s publicly stated aim [to protect the Assad regime] as if it is a conspiracy... But the Russian president... went on US television on NBC’s 60 minutes and – when directly asked by the interviewer – confirmed that indeed Russia is working to buttress the recognized government of Syria. These actions are entirely consistent with international law...
...that the US undertakes its actions in contravention to international law and standing accords and agreements between states, it is also exceptional...
...rather than being viewed as problematic and evidence of a criminal system which stands outside... the international community... American exceptionalism is viewed as a providential right and an inherent good...
...The United States... is the single state that repeatedly confuses the basic concepts and terms in IR and international law – creating an incoherent mess out of meaning, language, and internationally accepted standards. It combines and mixes phrases and meanings, which produces a meandering and self-referential combination of ‘mumbo-jumbo’ which categorically can only be described as discoherence. It switches its own internal and implied meanings and definitions for the consensus ones...
...‘legitimacy’ in US language only refers to its friends and partners, and vaguely though very inconsistently refers to concepts of democracy, freedom, and human rights. It is confused and inconsistent...
...The United States uses international platforms to threaten other states and to communicate in this discoherent syntax to its own population. But other states interpret their statements, indeed as threats, but ones which are not rational and instead based in this discoherence...
...acts as a Chauvinist, and irrational idealist state...
...the most dangerous, historically. US policy in the middle-east is largely irrational... from either a realist or idealist perspective. From these perspectives, there is little basis for intervention if the US does not want to face serious set-backs in the global arena, or if it does not want to create a global conflict which it is projected to lose...
... its policies, whether rational or irrational, are not rooted in an idealism based in conceptions of peace, mutual respect, and stability – but rather in conceptions of domination, chauvinism, exceptionalism, and the fetishization of military solutions.
... its self destruction will not be the result of trying to save the world, but as a result of trying to dominate it... Its motivations... will however have... a material consequence in the willingness of other states to aid the US in the aftermath of its self-immolation.
The abridged analysis makes the situation very clear. The United States is alone in promoting its radical ideology of US "exceptionalism" (the idea that the US is the most superior country in the world and the model for all other countries to follow) even though it talks of allies and partners.
The result is an "inherent bad faith model", whereby the US regime is only capable of reacting hostilely to initiatives by any other regime in the world. Even good progress or peaceful acts by other countries are dismissed as hostile subterfuge and scheming by the US leadership, who will only ever acknowledge the US as doing anything "good".
Such "good" (which will include lies, breaches of international law, and outright murder) is itself defined in the most chauvinist terms. It will encompass anything that promotes US leadership over the world.
The US regime's political leadership qualify as 'chauvinist irrational idealists' as the essay sttes. The US has become incapable of normal diplomatic relations with other states because its leadership can no longer communicate their intentions to other nations in any language other than threats and violence. They are currently speaking in what Flores calls "mumbo jumbo", whereby US leaders concoct their own deluded and twisted definitions of political terms such as "legitimacy" and "democracy", which no other countries understand.
The US threatens other countries with war if they do not obey edicts based on its unintelligible chauvinism and nonsense ideology, which is not recognized by other countries.
Not only does the handicapped US regime fail to communicate its intentions to other countries because of its confusing language, but it cannot even understand its own goals. Such is the effect of promiscuously mixing propaganda terms with diplomacy, and speaking to other nations in the language of one nation's own propaganda and ideological delusion.
In International Relations (IR) an irrational actor refers to a country that cannot be negotiated with because its actions cannot be understood by other actors, making it extremely dangerous and suspect. No-one can predict what it is going to do next. Often, in IR classrooms, the term also refers to apocalyptic terrorist groups including al-Qaeda and rogue states with an isolated, radical ideology. The term easily applies to a country isolating itself with beliefs in its own national superiority, like the US regime.
The regime's calculus of how to act is anchored in confused and dangerous chauvinism that only appeals within the regime and clashes with the international community, creating conflicts.
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