For the last 46 years, the math of U.S. debt relied on a geopolitical bargain with the world: The U.S. could run perpetual deficits because its military secured global trade.
But American consumers, already living under Covid-era inflation, are rapidly approaching their limit. trib.al/JaeJHXL
“The prevailing AA+ and Aa1 ratings rest on the assumptions of the unipolar, neoliberal era, backed by the now-dead Carter Doctrine.”
My latest in @newrepublic.com
At what point does mainstream global perception shift to “American blockade”
News aggregators like Google hold outsized political and economic influence in the US, and the economy of sublicensing content slowly grew larger and larger.
Re-routing the geography of the Persian Gulf with nukes to create new flows for capital, as Newt suggested, would virtually guarantee the end of the unipolar, neoliberal era, and accelerate the trend towards more overt forms of imperialism, which are already emerging under the Donroe Doctrine.
Sure, maybe, but what about our allies in Europe and East Asia?
Just like with Delcy. The Donroe Doctrine is terrifyingly flexible. If the comprador elite need to keep their revolutionary aesthetic to maintain social control, all the better for Trump.
Trumpworld has discovered Schrödinger’s Boots.
They are simultaneously on the ground and levitating, and can be used to fight a war that is both over and just getting started.
Be sure to congratulate them on this theoretical breakthrough.
“Thank you for helping us manufacture consent for our illegal war.”
The scale and scope of US political interference in Latin America under Trump is basically unprecedented since the Nixon administration.
Cope.
I’m sure our allies love being kept on their toes too.
Few people in contemporary international politics have been more vindicated than leftist NATO skeptics in South Korea and Japan.
And just like that, the mainstream value proposition of the US security umbrella has been completely inverted
Mainstream economists when you build industrial capacity using your own labor force and money: no fair! you’re doing it wrong!
Mainstream economists when you build your industrial capacity through subordinate integration and recolonization of the periphery: thank you for following the rules!
“We wish we could squeeze consumers even more. Now that we can’t, it’s becoming a problem for us.”
We went from we won the war to the war is nearly over to asking europe to help us fight the war to asking the people we are actively bombing to help fight the war.
This all happened in less than a month.
Nice lookin mise en place for a weeknight
There is no Krabby Patty secret formula.
Killing fishermen in the Caribbean and artisanal miners in the Andes serves the same function for transnational capital, it clears the space for accumulation, creates a pretext for the establishment of “secure” resource corridors, and the legal architecture for dispossession.
Meanwhile the US is having its Spanish Empire circa 1625 moment
Just incredible developments all around
They’re really botching this. They should’ve just said there was a WMD somewhere in the Iranian mountains and half the country would’ve taken their word for it.
The past few days have proven that spatial fixes cannot resolve the underlying contradictions of emerging industrial powers consuming more oil than they can extract locally.
*When you learn about empire in college
Empire is subtle. Empire doesn’t need to announce itself to work. Some people may not even know that they’re living in an empire.
*Empire when you’re an adult
Carter Doctrine: in tatters
Post Fordist class relations: exposed
Oh yeah, it’s over for American empire
Oops!… I did it again
(started a war in the Middle East to recapitalize America’s oil sector and got in way over my head)
The “build it here” president just killed the US’ domestic ship building industry to solve a manufactured oil supply crisis.
These companies should be filling orders for the next generation of dual fuel cargo ships.
Once consumers get used to the reduced prices, it will be hard to unwind this.
Decades of politically engrained Russophobia is really preventing us from recognizing the obvious cultural basis for transnational solidarity between the American and Russian working classes at the worst possible historic moment.
The longer the Strait stays closed, the longer Big Oil and Russia reap windfall profits. Not hard to understand that Trump did this on purpose to recapitalize the two dying empires of the 20th century.
The neoliberal American empire that accumulated wealth through neo-extractivist deals with developing nations and subordinate integration with emerging industrial powers really managed to convince 30% of its population that it was getting the short end of the stick and deserved more.