The Us Empire Does Not Seek Peace; Its Existence Depends on Endless War

By Caitlin Johnstone
 CaitlinJohnstone.com

September 27, 2024

On Tuesday the dementia-addled meat puppet who is still officially the President of the United States  told the UN that he is working to bring a "greater measure of peace and stability to the middle east," even as the US government pumps weapons into Israel so that it can continue its bloody massacres in Lebanon and Gaza.

On Wednesday Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh 𝕏 told the press that "we don't want to see this escalate" in Lebanon and that the US is working to "avoid a regional war".

Only an idiot would believe these claims. They are self-evidently false. Nobody who seeks peace finds themselves in a constant state of war. This is true of Israel, and it is true of the US-centralized empire as a whole.

Biden Claims He's Working for Peace in the Middle East But Continues to Back Israel
Biden made the claim in a speech at the UN General Assembly
by Dave DeCamp @DecampDave  #Biden  #Gaza  #Israel  #Palestinians  #UNGA79  #UNGA  #MiddleEast  t.co  pic.twitter.com/lBcfUGrd5K

- Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom)

It is obviously false to say the US seeks peace in the middle east, but it's not really accurate to say it seeks war either. To me that would be like saying water seeks wetness or fire seeks heat. War is just what the US empire is made of. It's the thing that it is.

Everything about the US-centralized power structure is pointed at continuous military expansionism and mass military violence. Once you've decided that it's your job to try to bring the entire population of your whole planet under the rule of a single power umbrella at any cost, you've accepted that you will be using violent force in perpetuity, because that's the only way to subdue populations who have no interest in such an arrangement. You might tell yourself that you want peace, and at times you might even actively try to avoid war, but everything about the way you've arranged your operation makes war inevitable.

This is the kind of environment that western empire managers spend their careers being groomed into accepting as normal. So they might actually believe they are telling the truth when they say their government wants peace, but this is the same as a fire saying it's doing everything it can to cool down the firewood.

It is the fire's nature to burn, and it is the US empire's nature to make war. War is interwoven into every fiber of its existence. It's written into every part of its code. As soon as the mass-scale use of violence ends, the globe-spanning power structure that's loosely centralized around Washington will end. War is the glue that holds that power structure together.

Look at this graph to see how Gaza has changed everything.

Israel is emboldened to carry out indiscriminate slaughter in Lebanon after almost a year of live-streamed genocide-backed fully by the U.S.-with zero consequences.  pic.twitter.com/plhTU0oU8Z

- Assal Rad (@AssalRad)

Both the mainstream "progressivism" of Bernie Sanders and the right wing "populism" of Donald Trump try in their own ways to argue for a kinder, gentler empire which avoids unnecessary conflicts and abuses, but these arguments are deceptions in and of themselves, because the empire is made of conflict and abuse.

The less war, militarism, economic strangulation and proxy interventionism there is, the less US empire there is. The empire can't roll back its violence any more than a shark can swim backwards. The only way to end the forward movement of a shark is to end its life.

The wars will not end until the US empire itself ends. This doesn't mean ending the US as a country, it means ending the globe-spanning power structure comprised of allies, assets and subjects that's held together by endless violence. Every foreign policy official in Washington, London, Paris and Canberra has been groomed to view this as the worst possible outcome and to avoid it at all cost, and to spend their careers fiendishly dedicated to the project of ensuring that the fire keeps burning and the shark keeps moving forward. Only ordinary members of the public with normal healthy human values will ever be able to see this.

The problem isn't that western officials keep making bad individual decisions at each individual juncture in foreign conflicts of interest, the problem is that the existence of the western empire guarantees foreign conflicts of interest, and ensures that violent force will be used to control their outcomes.

At some point in the future "They're bluffing, cross that red line" is going to be one step too far. If we continue along this trajectory, at some point Russia is going to do something horrifying to re-establish credible deterrence. The question we need to ask is: is it worth it?  t.co

- Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz)

Those who support the US empire will occasionally look back on history and acknowledge that in hindsight there were some bad individual decisions made with regard to Vietnam or Iraq or wherever, but they'll never admit there is an innately murderous structure in place that guarantees Vietnams and Iraqs will continue to happen in the future. But that is the reality, and you'll never hear it acknowledged in the state propaganda services known as the mainstream western press.  JOHNSTONE April 24: Bi... Best Price: $20.55 (as of 09:07 UTC - Details)

Our rulers are too far absorbed into the imperial machine to recognize this as true, so you will reliably hear them babbling about seeking peace and avoiding civilian suffering - even as they take steps ensuring that peace will not happen and civilians continue to suffer. These are the only moves they can see on the chessboard. The options that would lead to real peace are not even recognized as legal moves in the game. So they keep moving the pieces around in accordance with the rules of empire, and saying "Oh how sad" when families are incinerated and children are ripped to shreds, but saying that it was the only move available on the board.

Our world is on fire, and the US-centralized empire is the flame. We ordinary people must find some way to extinguish it, before  it torches us all.

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