invisible empire

[ILOTSMYBRAIN]

Ok I've watched the first hour of it. IT was painful and I'd really prefer not to waste any more time with it.

 

The first 20 mins may as well be cut out, it is totally off point. Listen to the Bad Religion song, "Fertile Crescent", that's what it is about.

 

the context they are using it here is summed up by Francis Fukyama's theory of the End Of History. When they refer to order here, they are talking about the balance of power in the world. Since nomadic tribes started planting crops and then staying in place to defend those crops against other tribes civilisation (loosely defined) started. From here on in the balance of power, or the order can be seen.

 

The balance/order may be that the Smith tribe over the hill has 15% more people and they come down and raid the crops and livestock of the Jones clan, the Davis Tribe and the Brown crew once every month using their superior numbers to overcome resistance. In this order the Smith family has the balance of power (balance does not imply equilibrium). This is a unipolar balance/order, there is one group/pole that has power over the rest. If the Brown crew has more babies and in 15 years time grows by 12%, they start battling it out with the Smiths and taking what they want from the Jones and the Davis clans. This is a bipolar order/balance of power. More than two powers in a system and it's called multipower order/balance of power.

 

All through history we see this repeated regionally (During the Assyrian empire in the Middle East, the Peloponnesian/Greek and Warring states/China periods) where you had multiple powers battling it out in contained regions and poles of power shifted, some internally balanced by building up armies and technology whilst others externally balanced by joining forces with other city states, etc.

 

You also see it carried out globally or trans-regionally such as with the Ottoman empire, the PErsian empire, the Roman empire, the Mongolian empire, the British empire, the Soviet empire and the US empire. At the end of the Second World war the British empire had reduced as a power along with the Ottoman empire, all that was left was the Soviet Empire and the new American power. They battled it out in a bipolar order of power until the USSR lost and the US remained as a sole super power meaning that the bipolar order was replaced by the unipolar order.

 

That's what the first 20 minutes was referring to, the order of the most powerful or balance of power in the world between nation states. One of the differences between the USSR and the US was economic and social systems/ideologies. The US won that battle meaning that their system was the only one remaining, the capitalist/market/democratic system. Francis Fukiyama made the argument (he said that the victory began with one of Napolean's battles and that the Cold War was just the final victory) that now the whole world was going to move over to the democratic market system. The theory then flows that countries would eventually become so interconnected and interdependent through supply and market chains that no one would ever go to war again (neo-liberalism and democratic peace theory crosing over). That's why he called it end of history, there would be nothing left to talk about because the world would move in to a new world order of massive markets competing for dominance and military competition would be a thing of the past. The new world order being referred to there was solely referring to the global balance of power being won by the US. It had no reference whatsoever to a hidden controlling elite.

 

Go to the library, look up End of History by Francis Fukiyama and see for yourself. Dig back and read the transcripts of those interviews and public speeches in full and see for yourself. I'm old enough that I watched them all when they actually occurred.

 

 

 

 

 

That's the first element of the film that I take issue with, there are more claims that are just totally wrong and and easily disproved and I'll hit them up later.

 

I ran through the thread, and I am assuming you are referring to this post.

 

Although I do agree with it, I do not agree with how you apply the New World Order to this balance. I really don't think the term New World Order has anything to do with balance.

 

So, we're still chasing our tails here.

[christo-f]

No, sorry I should have said that it wasn't in this thread where I've gone through it. It was in the strategy thread and a few other.

 

Offshore balancing is a strategy employed by great powers aimed at making countries in other regions compete with each other so they spend their resources and their attention competing with each other in their region in an effort to contain them. This then precludes a nation becoming the regional hegemon and working itself in to a position where it will be strong enough to challenge you.

 

The idiots like Rummsfeld thought that they would just waltz on in there, take out Saddam, install a pro-West/anti-Iran govt and then IRan would spend its time balancing against its neighbour(s) instead of the US on a global scale. However we all know that plan was a failure (many of us knew before hand that it was as well) and we now have the total fucking blackhole there now.

 

The original theory was good, keep Iran contained, as they are the strongest in the region, and depose a fucktard dictator as a bonus. US would have been able to leave in a few years leaving a healthy offshore balancing mechanism at work and then go back to focusing on Afghanistan/South Asia (that is now being seen as an offshore balancing mech for the region, shoring up Pakistan to keep the competition in the region instead of India becoming too powerful and being able to extend its power in to the Arabian see and critical shipping lanes) and Russia.

 

Unfortunately the execution was fucking horrible, there was a lot of focus on profiteering and other bullshit and we now have pretty much handed Iraq to Iran...., the exact opposite of what the coalition set out to achieve.

 

The WMD crap was a smokescreen to get the electorate behind it, along with the dictator stuff (which is of course true, not just the core rationale) because it is believed that you couldn't put it the way I have above and have it accepted by the voting public. I am yet to hear an argument that I accept on that note, I think the electorate should be given more credit.

 

 

That's why it happened and I can tell you that as a fact, not as just my take on the issue.