It would be tempting to view Robert Kaplan’s op-ed for Bloomberg this week as an April Fools’ prank, but unfortunately he seems to be serious:
The fight is for something broader and more fundamental: the right of peoples the world over to determine their own futures and to be free from naked aggression. This requires an orderly world where the law of the jungle does not operate. Thus, we should welcome a number of autocracies into this struggle.
Nothing demonstrates a desire to fight for self-determination like aligning with governments that deny their people the right to determine their own futures. It is not clear why these governments should be brought into a struggle against naked aggression when many of them are engaged in their own aggression. Kaplan touts the “relatively enlightened” ruler of Morocco as an example of the sort of autocracy that he means while conveniently ignoring that the Moroccan government illegally occupies territory that it seized by force almost fifty years ago and denies self-determination to the Sahrawi people that live in that territory.
One of the authoritarian regimes that Kaplan wants us to appreciate is none other than the Saudi government. Kaplan informs us that “personal freedoms have dramatically expanded” under the de facto rule of Mohammed bin Salman. This is partly true in certain limited respects, but it is also extremely misleading. While there has been some loosening of restrictions in social life, there has been intensifying repression when it comes to speech and expression. Dissenters are not only jailed, but they are also tortured and executed.
Read the rest of the article at SubStack
Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
nice overtime out there making weapons.
Should make some serious bank.
We should ignore what is going on in Ukraine like we ignored so many other conflicts we funded and supplied.
Like Yemen. Or Syria: We can ignore Ukraine too, just send them weapons and forget it. Send weapons to the prison inmates now armed and running free in bombed out Ukraine cities. What could go wrong? Right?
Zelenski freed the prisoners so that they could be free and as long as they were free, were front line unregulated militerized cannon fodder.
The Ukraine army is not disciplined or moral or honorable.
How many murders and rapes has Zelenski’s Zombies performed?
Are they mining gold teeth yet?
I respectfully disagree. I read Robert Kaplan’s essay. Essentially, he falls into the realist school of international relations. Professor John Mearshimer is the leading theorist of that school, and he identifies himself as an offensive realist having been influenced by George Kennan’s containment strategy in the Cold War. Mearshumer sees the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Even FDR defended a Latin American dictator once when he said, “He may be a bastard (or a son of a bitch – I forgot), but he’s our bastard.” The liberal delusion we can transform backward, authoritarian regimes throughout the world by the barrel of a gun has led to one foreign policy debacle after another. From the fall of Saigon to the fall of Kabul, we continue to commit these humiliating military defeats in the name of some democratic ideal shrouded in the fog on Mount Olympus. I know. I served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam. I saw the true cost of that unnecessary war. And I came back and got these Nazi salutes and screams of “Sieg Heil!’ as longhairs passed me in the opposite direction in the crowded concourse of the Seattle Airport. I know I was on a fool’s errand. I can admit that in old age. But in September, 2010, the VA finally awarded me a disability because my specific kind of heart disease was linked to my exposure to Agent Orange. And, ironically, the president who signed the executive order in November, 1961, to use napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam, was none other than JFK our fallen king of Camelot on the Potomac. He’s famous of course for the quote: “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” So spare me these liberal pieties about democracy. Unless you are willing to bring back the draft and send one of your children or relatives off to war. Mearshimer said in a lecture on YouTube that “the U.S. is fighting the Russians to the last Ukrainian.” He’s right of course. He said he could care less if Russians are comfortable living under President Putin’s “soft authoritarianism.” NATO ‘led Zelensky down the primrose path,” Mearshimer noted. NATO repeatedly disregarded Putin’s warning about NATO expansion to the Russian border. That doesn’t’ justify his aggression against Ukraine. But I empathize with his view that the U.S. views Russia as a defeated nation much like the Entente Allies did in the Paris Peace Treaty in June, 1919, and slapped that war guilt charge on Germany. I have witnessed such horrific carnage all in the name of spreading democracy. So many millions of innocent Vietnamese civilians have died needlessly for that abstract ideal which is neoliberal idolatry. We should all hand our heads in shame for these unnecessary wars. From the fall of Saigon to the fall of Kabul, it’s been one disaster after another. What is the rule-based order the U.S. really believes in? “The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.” Thucydides said that around 400 B.C. but to these pampered policy wonks in Washington, D.C, apparently it’s still news to them.
I remarked elsewhere on the Web that to understand the underpinnings of our Western military ambitions is to know about the religious snakeoil that lubes it. That Snakeoil in the USA is currently a blend of Eschatologies that presently agree. Europe has several themselves as do other cultures. Some Eschatologies agree and are in several instances allied that way and are aligned by common eschatological beliefs. Nations are frequently aligned this way as are their militaries.
What is an Eschatology? It is a end-time sequence of events as interpreted from scripture: A belief system. When wrongly interpreted and then taught as truth it becomes Doctrinal Error. Action taken on the teaching of Doctrinal error becomes Practical Error that is predicted on how to respond to anticipated events the doctrines have determined. There is a right dividing interpretation of scripture about end time events and it belongs to the victor scripturally as truth including understanding of the consumation of various ends. To really know where a nation is going including war and conquest and ruin depends on how their version of biblical self preservation is interpreted. The USA is very active to secure Jerusalem militarily and it is all wrong and is stolen / unfounded virtue. Our privitized government is leaning heavily on building and occupying a temple there as if it is ours. Truth be told, 144,000 make the harvest garner world wide in a fiery disaster which is a refining Malachi chapter 3; it is likened to the great flood to cleanse the earth of wicked people and their wicked genocidal wars.
Genesis 49: 10
Unfortunately this division of dominions today began after the flood when the the sons of Noah separated with their wives to build ‘Branches’ of Adam’s genetic family, post flood. Each genetic branch believed that their genetic line would progenate the ‘Promised Seed of the Woman’ i.e. the Messiah of Genesis 3:15 promise and Great Hope.The Branch came through Shem’s line, on through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Both Ham and japheth’s lines produced Poseurs like Nimrod and the Divine Pharaohs who believed they were the ‘chosen’ people to produce the promised genetic Messiah. Throughout time there have been poseurs, Cain being the first and prototype of The Antichrist: a murderer.
Today’s war is rooted in Dominionist beliefs that provide a path to fleshing out the most common Western view of end time events where Russia is wrongly identified in Western Eschatologies as ‘Rosh’ in Ezekiel 38:3. A simple search of that verse can produce a list of versions of translations of the bible where you can see that publishers have ‘tweeked’ the truth for war. Rosh is a Hebrew word that means head, it is not a place, region or people.
Russia is the target of Western Eschatologies based on wrong teachings and has been for over 100 years. Genocide on Russian leadership insured that their line would not continue to Jerusalem.
Why is that relevant to the verse listed above?
It is relevant because of all the Eschatologies out there, they have one too and it is on display in the flag of the Current Presidential Standard of the Russian Federation: The Eagle, The Scepter, the victory, the promised Hope of righteous dominion is represented in it. They have a holy war eschatological belief too, look at the end product centered on the flag: a celestial truth; Sagittarius in Victory.
Genesis 49: 10
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be
Two conditions in that verse: Shilo Come (the Messiah) to establish Godly Dominion by proxy and a gathering of Remnant Judah: heirloom Hebrews. Then the scepter (continuing ministry) is relinquished from continuation and genetic progeny of JUDAH is ended and is no longer required to serve in that ongoing capacity.
2 kitty
out
Kaplan obviously cranked out a riyal-operated piece of trash.
Never ever mention the Saudi Terrorists or the Dancing Mossad Agents in New York on 9/11 !!!
Nobody but you ever mentions the Dancing Mossad Agents in New York on 9/11, because they weren’t in New York.