In These New Times

Cailean Bochanan

2nd October, 2020

General Sir Nicholas Carter has warned that Russia and China, authoritarian regimes as he has it, are using the covid crisis to undermine Western societies. He even accuses them of seeking to win without fighting. That is probably true in accordance of the dictum of Sun Tzu. In fact, they may already have won. But not in the eyes of out gallant general. This is a man who called for the army to be deployed against coronavrus back in March. He is the symbol and the rallying point of all those who refuse to recognise that the empire is over. In this speech he was introduced in this web conference by David Petreaus, a seasoned neocon. The neocons, the infection which won’t go away, are indeed back. Some of them are featured in the Transition Integrity Project, a more or less brazen attempt to overthrow the president of the USA in the, highly likely, event that he wins the coming election. Where this leads the USA is anyone’s guess but the great hope of the neocons, judging by past form , is that America will once again lead the world to a New World Order by defeating the Russia/China alliance. That certainly seems to be a long shot, but politics as the art of the impossible is exactly attuned to dying empires. 

What concretely, does Carter propose. He has realized that modern warfare is about modern technology, specifically 5G, AI, robotisation and cybernetics. Isn’t it a bit late in the day to realise this? Well, the West thought they could win through their Jihadi irregulars destabilising the Middle East and thence both Russia and China. Empire on the cheap, if you like, actual investment, long term investment, in new technology being beyond the scope of America’s corporate welfare system. So, that all has to change- there has to be a reset. The pretext for the reset is the lockdown, a proposal first mooted by the Chinese and their friends in the WHO. Perhaps the Chinese hoped to out the war party once and for all and Carter and Petreaus have duly obliged. Their language may be newspeak but their intentions are transparent. The US/UK and their self-declared allies have decided to reassert their birthright, their ‘ownership” of the “international community”.

Covid, of course, is about politics rather than public health. In the first instance, it is essential in order to set the US election within the framework of the “new normal”. This enables the subversion of the electoral process as never before. In particular, it allows the postal voting which , as Trump correctly points out, is a guaranteed means of electoral fraud. All that matters if that the outcome, presumably a victory by Donald Trump, can be contested. Why the removal of Trump is such an imperative I can’t say. That it is an imperative is beyond question. If the neocons are in the mix , as they appear to be, then it can only be a question of war or peace. I would then surmise that Trump, despite all appearances, intends to seek an American diplomacy which permits a detente with Russia/China wheres his adversaries seek a New World Order built on the ashes of Russia and China. Trump’s policy then would be a realistic pursuit of US national interests as opposed to the entrenched fanaticism of fantasists.

It is significant that Trump has consistently sought to downplay the coronavirus crisis in contrast to most of the media, the democrats in general and the neocons in particular. Not only is coronavirus a cover for electoral fraud, it is instrumental in furthering the aims of the war party. The USA has to “reset”, restructure in the interests of war. This would entail economies of scale, the monopolisation of the economy, the rapid running down of social programmes, the destruction of independent wealth, the middle class and the scaling down of the population. If fascism is defined as the orientation of an entire society to war then this is fascism- fascism with a transhuman face: the human values of yesteryear and their advocates reduced to naught. We can already get more than a glimpse of this in the lockdown, already a dystopia which leaves 1984 or Brave New World looking not so bad after all. Is this then between an Orwellian vision and a Huxley vision. I believe not. We are firmly placed in Oceania and Orwell’s world of rivalries between power blocks. The Western elites have retreated from globalisation which is now being led by China. They make seek to retool for global war, a ‘challenge” too far I would say, regress into a fourth world misery, or finally embrace the new multipolar reality where no one is top dog, not even China, and the world finds a new equilibrium.