The Controlled Demolition of the Post-War Status Quo

The more I study history, the more I realise that what we see are just the reflections of geopolitical projects and forces of huge importance, planned and engineered behind closed doors and away from prying eyes. Even contemplating of the self-inflicted wounds which our civilisation seems to be gleefully indulging in makes it clear that what we’re seeing here is a controlled demolition of the post-war status quo, that brief blip in human history when it looked like democracy might have had a chance.

• Resource wars in Syria, Libya, the Caspian Basin.
• The use of such wars to create a refugee crisis which will destabilise states.
• The use of such destabilisation to generate and intensify a climate of fear.
• The election of Trump.
• Brexit.
• Brazil.
• But Europe was still a bastion of common sense. So now Merkel.

Was it all just an illusion? It’s almost as though someone is throwing as many black swans as they can find into the fire.

Multinationals and their cartels have had more power and resources and less accountability than nation states since at least the 1970s, and have happily manipulated world affairs to their own advantage – however that advantage might be defined. Their reaction to the democratising power of the internet has been to cynically undermine globalisation and to make it into a corporate asset stripping bonanza, and when peoples have tried to resist and complain, they’ve stoked the fires of international conflict to shut them up. It’s so easy to fire people up to mindless hatred on the rantings of demagogues.

That’s the tragedy of our civilisation. None of this collapse was ever necessary. The super-rich and powerful do not want to reform the international order, as that would require a redistribution of influence and resources to their personal disadvantage, however good it would be for the planet and for the rest of humankind. Their traditional solution is to blow everything up – in marketing-speak, “the creation of demand by destroying inventories and infrastructure”. That way, the starry-eyed dreamers and optimists end up so stunned and impoverished they have to spend two generations rebuilding and simply staying alive instead of agitating for progressive reform. They’re willing to pay for social inertia and hegemony with our blood.

And so the megabust-megaboom cycle churns relentlessly on, and fresh meat is needed for the grinder. We’ve got bullets to sell, lies to parade. As Chairman Mao said, “history is the symptom of our disease”.

We allow ourselves to be governed by psychopaths to our detriment. It used to be that the only way to win was not to play. But now, in the era of automated warfare, we’re not even in the game.

Heaven save us from the nightmares of ambitious men.