Words are very powerful and language has been instrumentalised in this Internet Era, where algorithmic control can inorganically amplify and explode certain words. The linguistics scholar Noam Chomsky has argued, for example, that the only reason we hear the word ‘unprovoked’ every time anyone mentions Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the mainstream news media is because it absolutely was provoked, and they know it. Essentially, the constant repetition of ''unprovoked'' forecloses the argument and shuts down the bandwidth of discussion and acceptable opinion. To discuss ''Provocation'' is essentially outside the bandwidth of acceptable opinion.
Another word which has popped over the Radar is the word Hēgemōny or Hēgemōn. Its rise to prominence has been more organic but its Arc has not been dissimilar.
Hēgemōny is derived from the post-classical Latin word hegemonia from the Greek word ἡγεμονία hēgemonía, meaning "authority, rule, political supremacy" and is related to the word ἡγεμών hēgemōn "leader". and typically speaks to the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states. Of course, we have witnessed domain inflation and we need to consider the Technological domain, Space amongst others.
The Berlin Wall fell in 9 November 1989
Arno Fischer's "East Berlin, New Year's Eve" (1989-1990) shows the first celebration of New Year's Eve after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Courtesy of the Estate Arno Fischer, Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen
and the USSR collapsed not much later and China had yet to embark on its meteoric rise.
This was in fact a peak Hēgemōnic moment and in 1991, President George H. W. Bush announced a “new world order” that he believed would replace the bipolar politics of the Cold War era with a U.S.-driven unipolar order.
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” Karl Rove pronounced in 2004
Mario Vargas Llosa wrote in his book The Neighborhood which was about Peru in the time of Fujimori and the Dr. ~ ''Something bigger than You and me Power. You don’t fool around with Power my Friend''.
During this period, the US was the Hēgemōn and was not be fooled around with. Only Fools embarked on such an Errand.
For any Hēgemōn, it is always first and foremost about War and the Military domain. Might is essentially right.
“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.” [Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian]
“It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”
And War is red in tooth and claw, its about the capacity to pile up skulls. Everything else is incidental, the moral story, the civilising mission, that is all just an adornment.
Cormac McCarthy’s art of war By Nick Burns
''McCarthy recasts the frontier as a bloodland that knows no progress, in which every institution of civil society is shattered by gleeful atrocity. Funerals are interrupted by more slaying, supplicants dragged from altars and scalped, women and children unspared. Banquets descend into gunfire; all visits to drinking establishments end in bloodshed; sexual relations take the exclusive form of rape and (more rarely) prostitution. The judge, exemplary figure of American brutality, inaugurates it all at the book’s outset by organising a lynch mob against an innocent preacher in Nacogdoches, Texas – located, as the scholar Steven Frye has noted, just short of the hundredth parallel. His efforts invariably seem to succeed and meet with applause from all those except his victims. After he admits he has fabricated the allegation against the preacher, astonished witnesses buy him a drink at the bar.'' [Cormac McCarthy’s art of war By Nick Burns]
Think of the colonial enterprise, King Leopald's Congo. In its purest essence Hēgemōnic control is all about the military, the ability to pile up skulls
while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again
However, The Iraq War, the War on Terror, The War to topple Muammar Gaddafi were in essence colonial war type expeditions. The Adversary was not a Peer Competitor. The Peer Competitors were steering clear, biding their time. Peer Competitors do not engage because escalation could easily result in Mutually Assured Destruction, a point made by Putin to Oliver Stone
OLIVER STONE to PUTIN (2015): "In a hot war, is the US dominant?"
and by Medvedev severally.
The point was made differently in the rockumentary Spinal Tap -
My point is that in the military domain, you can never dial the needle to 11 with a Peer Competitor.
So Peer competition is always a Proxy War affair. As it was in Afghanistan
Brzezinski Taliban
Brzezinski said:
“That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.’ Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.”
And Ukraine falls into that category.
I am not a military strategist but what is truly astonishing is how many so called Military Strategists continued to insist until very recently that the counter offensive was a Go and Russia would be rolled back. The amount of quaaludes that these so called Stategists have been popping is remarkable.
Another quaalude she gonna love me again
bit.ly/45Khwxp
Quaaludes ‘’promote relaxation, sleepiness and sometimes a feeling of euphoria. It causes a drop in blood pressure and slows the pulse rate. These properties are the reason why it was initially thought to be a useful sedative and anxiolytic It became a recreational drug due to its euphoric effect’’
What we know is that this War had distinct phases. The First Phase where Russia deployed a 190,000 man Army was a negotiating stance. This Phase was one where Russia wanted to show its intent and get to the negotiating Table, which is what happened. Those negotiations were cancelled not by Zelensky but by Boris Johnson. Ukraine overmatched Russia in that initial phase and the West assumed Russia was a house of cards and if the advantage was pressed, Regime Change was within its grasp. Russia retreated and Ukraine is a very flat geography and therefore Russia had to retreat a considerable distance. Since then Russia has resized its force, dug in and Ukraine ground itself into the dust. The counter offensive was a complete dud and the Ukrainian army is now facing a cascade like collapse. We are all looking at a road wreck and the vehicle is no longer roadworthy. Each passing day is now denuding NATO's military bona fides. Some introspection is now due but any introspection would have to admit that Biden has committed a colossal foreign policy blunder and he has an election to face. So we pop more quaaludes. Outside the quaalude level delusion, someone might ask about the ROI on our Military spending and frankly, the sooner the better. In terms of the military domain, it is as plan as day, US Hēgemōny is no more.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said, “There has to be a mutual recognition that a military victory is probably, in the true sense of the word is maybe not achievable through military means,” he added, “and therefore you need to turn to other means.”
No one was listening.
The Matter of Hēgemōny in the Military domein is concluded. It no longer exists. It is clear Russia has wrung an extraordinarily high ROI from its military expenditure.
The Financial and economic domain is also critical. You will recall at the outset of the War, The US froze Russia's Foreign Exchange reserves and launched a program of sanction warfare.
“We’ve made him stare into an economic abyss. But he could choose to pull back.” @Newyorker
“You know, we can play chess, too,” Singh said. “It was important for us to show that the fortress could come crumbling down.”
Russia pivoted East and South as a response. BRICS is now ''BRICS 11 controls 39% of global oil exports; 45.9% of proven reserves; and at least 47.6% of all oil produced globally, according to InfoTEK. With BRICS 11 possibly including Venezuela, Algeria and Kazakhstan as new members as early as in 2024, it may control as much as 90% of all oil and gas traded globally. Inevitable corollary: operations settled in local currencies bypassing the US dollar. And inevitable conclusion: petrodollar in a coma'' @realpepeescobar.
The Financial Architecture which was constituted by $ Dollar, NYMEX. COMEX et al is being eroded. In the markets, the Trend is your Friend and the Trend is clear. The benchmark Oil Price was set by NYMEX but inorganic price moves have eroded faith in the US benchmark price. Shenanigans at COMEX in the price of Gold means Shanghai now trades at a premium of $40.00 to the price in New York. These Price dysfunctions are the Signal in all the noise. Regime change is in plain sight, it is no longer over the horizon.
We have played our hand as recklessly as Biden drained the SPR.
The Achilles Heel in this entire Financial Complex is the bond market. The US is making bigger and bigger calls to fund an ever widening Gap. And the Longer End of the bond market is the Canary in the coal mine. Bond Yields have been climbing and a Buyers strike is not unfathomable. YCC will be a catalyst for a much weaker Dollar. So I would load up on Puts on the US Ultra Bond, the Long Gilt and the BUXL. Its a No Brainer.
We now seem to betting on China's imminent financial collapse. That seems to be the latest algorithmically boosted narrative but frankly it is as deluded as the sanction warfare program. The eminent French Demographer and Historian Emmanuel Todd has a penchant for selecting outstanding data points
Look at for example the number of Engineers China, Russia, US and Europe produce every year and for me that is a Future Signal around Technological Prowess.
Weltwoche: What was your certainty that the Soviet Union would collapse based on?
Todd: The increase in infant mortality. I was 25 then. Today I use the same parameters. When Putin came to power, child mortality fell rapidly. Today, infant mortality in the United States is higher than in Russia. Not Russia—America is in crisis.
Without introspection, we are just pumping Narratives at a time when the ground is shifting at increasing speed.