What If US Policymakers Are Even More Stupid Than We Think They Are?

What If US Policymakers Are Even More Stupid Than We Think They Are?

By Karen Kwiatkowski

It goes without saying that the US foreign policy is not wise, not measured, nor even well informed. The US leadership doesn’t even try to hide the hypocrisy and the stupidity.

The Defense Department has been clear about its US foreign policy agenda vis a vis Russia, as discussed here in a 2019 Rand Corp paper, and repeated in the media by people on all sides who take this agenda as fact.  Overextending and unbalancing Russia is the rationale for the US proxy war in Ukraine, for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, for the unprecedented economic sanctions and financial seizures of Russian assets by western governments, for the CIA instigated color revolutions in Eurasia, and the US naval and extensive US military occupation throughout the world.  All acts – hypocritical, terroristic, offensive and dishonorable – are justified under this program.  For the elites running the US capital, it’s what war looks like.  They have never fought in one, but from what they have read in books and screenplays, this makes sense to them.

“Our leaders” appear to believe in this agenda.  It also fits with WEF centralization, maintains the western elite status quo, supports the MICIMATT, and seeks to expand global commodity exploitation by western capitals.

As this information is public, you don’t need to be a PhD or an intel weenie to figure it out.  But what if the US is the one being played, and not the other way around?

I was asked the other day by RT if the US can afford to keep sustaining Ukraine’s defense and pay for Zelensky’s fantasies on an annual basis – given that the USG is on track to spend twice as much ($91 Billion) as we spent in Afghanistan per year, and funding the Ukrainian military at a level that is 33% higher than the entire Russian annual military budget?  I answered, “Of course we can’t!”

That was my reactive response – I have never believed the US could afford to fund its domestic welfare, entitlement, and military expenses, much less fighting proxy wars.

What if my gut feeling, from a lifetime of trying to understand how things really work, is already common knowledge in the halls of power outside the US?  For example, what if the Russians and the Chinese had already assessed and long understood the fundamental weakness of the United States in the areas of fiscal, monetary, economic, military and cultural health?

If this is the case, I might understand the Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine better than many of our otherwise objective military and strategy analysts. Pro-Western media claim victories where none exist – and pro-Russian commentators disdain Russian military conservatism.  Both sides are constantly disappointed by facts on the ground.  Russia has consistently broadcasted Moscow’s simple objectives for the SMO – and they are accomplished now.  Nazis in the east are gone, Russians in the east who were intended to be protected under Minsk II are protected now – as Russian citizens, and the ability of Ukraine to organically threaten Russia has been greatly reduced.  NATO membership is off the table, and the world has gotten a glimpse of what Zelensky-style democracy and statesmanship looks like.  And it looks like “Russia attacks Poland” and “Ukrainian corruption eliminated.”  It speaks to the need for a strait-jacket, size tight, not more weapons and cash.

What if the draining of NATO and US stockpiles of older but otherwise useful weapons and always needed cash and promises, were – or became – part of the Russian plan?  Because this is happening.  The US patriotic view is that we are helping Ukraine because it is a “democracy,” because it has the goods on Biden and the Democrat corruption and treason, because it wishes to become a more-US-controllable Israel in Europe, and because the money allocated to Ukraine is actually going into US defense corporate pockets – and paving the way for a massive defense replenishment budget in the coming decade.  This all makes sense depending upon how cynical you are.

But don’t open-ended bad wars weaken empires, destroy their money, and ultimately end them? Don’t they tend to divide the population such that unity on any foreign policy becomes impossible?

What if this conservatively paced, heavily contracted, and focused Russian effort was also about drawing in the US, wasting its little remaining wealth and credibility, feeding the US addiction to being an intervening superpower – because our elites have devolved to the level of the man with only a hammer in his toolbox, and every problem a nail.

A better analogy for US foreign policy is not a carpenter with a hammer, but the law-unto-himself Negan and a barbed-wire wrapped baseball bat named “Lucille.” Bits of flesh, brain and blood remaining on that tool from past “problem-solving” speaks honestly to the legacy of post-WWII US foreign policy in the name of democracy.

Afghanistan in 1979 and 2001, and in Iraq 1991 and 2003, and in Ukraine in 2014 were all publicly justified superficially for “democracy” and fundamentally against Russian cohesion and power, with an aim to drain, weaken, sow division, cause Russia to waste lives and treasury, to drag out a conflict.

Wait, what?  This is “being done” to the US now. Is US leadership being played by Russia in Ukraine?  Are we Brer Rabbit to a Russian Brer Fox?  The Uncle Remus tale ends well for Rabbit, who after getting stuck in a tar-baby, and made completely vulnerable to Fox, is able to lie and trick his way out of that situation, appealing to the arrogance of power with “Please, Brer Fox, don’t throw me in the brier patch….”

I have a tough time believing our political and military leadership is anywhere near as smart as Brer Rabbit, and I fear that they are already deeply stuck.

This very American folk tale is a warning about Brer Rabbit’s arrogance and over-confidence, and Brer Fox’s loss of good sense after seeing a plan come together.  It ends with a humbled, but alive rabbit, and a wiser Fox. Sadly, in this story, there is no long-term role for Zelensky, who plays a US-created tar baby.  There may be something for little Volodymyr, with the Slavic story of the Clay Boy, about a kind of golem who destroys both his parents, and everything they have.

I’m not sure our policymakers would understand the moral of these stories.  Their stupidity may ultimately be dealt with in the gallows.

Source: Lew Rockwell