Stephen Lendman

US/Russian relations are adversarial. Nothing in prospect suggests change. Neocon lunatics in Washington bear full responsibility. Is eventual war inevitable?

Will nuclear weapons be used for long sought regime change? Is the unthinkable possible? Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and NATO commander General Philip Breedlove, among others, persist in calling Russia America’s greatest existential threat.

Putin is committed to world peace, stability and mutual cooperation among all nations. Moscow threatens no one. Washington is the greatest threat to world peace under Republican or Democrat leadership.

A nation perpetually at war risks igniting it globally with super-weapons able to end life on earth. Rogue leadership in Washington threatens it.

America needs enemies to justify its imperial agenda. None exist so they’re invented - Russia US enemy No. 1. Phony diplomacy at the Foreign Ministry and other levels conceal longstanding regime change plans.

Washington covets control over Russia’s huge territory, its oil, gas and other resources, its vast expanse it wants partitioned for easier control.

It wants new locations for more military bases, platforms for more wars than already, wanting China, Iran and other independent countries conquered and controlled the same way.

Propaganda wars demonizing their leaders precede hot ones. Russia and China alone threaten Washington’s hegemonic ambitions. Plans call for replacing them with US controlled vassal states.

In his book, titled “World in Crisis: The End of the American Century,” the late historian Gabriel Kolko called America in decline, its influence waning, China, Russia, India, Brazil and other nations increasingly tired of its imperial recklessness, counterproductive to their own interests.

Immanuel Wallerstein believes “the economic, political and military factors that contributed to US hegemony are the same (ones) inexorably produc(ing)” its decline.

The late Chalmers Johnson called it the same dynamic that doomed past empires - “isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy,” combined with tyranny headed toward becoming full-blown.

The “combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, military Keynesianism, and ruinous military expenses have destroyed our republican structure in favor of an imperial presidency. We are on the cusp of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire,” Johnson explained.

Scattered reforms won’t work. America’s political system is too depraved to fix. A near-two-and-a-half century experiment failed - proving absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.