Recently I was talking with a colleague who said he wished that, when there is anti-war protest in Providence, the protesters would be able to offer something a bit more substantial that just slogans and pacific ideals. I agree with this sentiment
To that extent, I recently had the opportunity to speak with Eric Draitser. He is a geopolitical analyst and commentator whose work can be read in CounterPunch, RT television’s website, and a variety of other forums. He currently can be heard weekly delivering the podcast CounterPunch Radio.
Over the next several articles, Draitser will introduce through our conversation a series of concepts and strategies that are now gaining currency within the international geopolitical arena. The theory of a multi-polar world, for our purposes, envisions the end of a world order where the United States is the dominant power in the international political arena. In its place, various regional powers emerge and develop a set of consensus points that are used to dictate a level of peace and stability in the world. In this world-view, the Russian, Chinese, Indian, and Iranian leadership in their spheres of influence help balance out and reduce the occurrence of conflicts.
This is not a new concept and it is one that is quite familiar to figures such as Sen. Jack Reed, the Rhode Island congressional delegate who is considered a liberal despite sitting on a military appropriations committee where he has shoveled billions of dollars into the maw of the military-industrial complex while Rhode Island has above-average unemployment and astounding rates of childhood hunger, homelessness, and poverty. Sen. Reed knows that a multi-polar world would reduce the spending on the Pentagon budget and make some of the social safety net programs proposed by the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign not just tenable but conservative when one considers that over half of our total annual budget goes to fund war. Yet in the name of an antiquated and paranoid Cold War mindset wherein we must fear the Moscow-Peking alliance, America is a shambling, barely-conscious impersonation of the late Roman empire, over-extended and dependent on a semi-privatized contractor military the has wrought chaos, destruction, and death across much of the world while alienating those who would have us as allies.
I do not deny that some of these concepts are jarring at first. The power structure has engineered a clever campaign to make the efforts of our potential allies seem like “imperialism” and “aggression”. It is also vital to understand that these are not apologias for singular individuals or governments, states are always violent systems. It is also not a direct path to the Big Rock Candy Mountain of some wonderful socialist tomorrow. Yet in a world where America is a pariah and loathed by its neighbors due to imperial arrogance and where Jack Reed, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Hillary Clinton are not sending themselves or their loved ones to die in war, consider these ideas with maturity.
