And last but not least, as hinted, there is plain, simple, good old-fashioned irony. There is so much we'll need a foot-long Thanksgiving Day carving knife to slice through it before the side dishes get cold! The truism that America doesn't 'do irony' has always been suspect. It does grand irony on a sweeping, cosmic scale; it has mastered the art and created its own unique brand. It will occasionally be of the sublime and surreal kind, quite often ridiculous, and frequently tragic! Either way any irony should be obvious to most without being dragged kicking and screaming to it. The 'double irony' of course being that maybe America does not realize just how well it does 'do' irony.
For any reader with a passing knowledge of, and general interest in, the American historical narrative and the great power politics that drive it (if you're reached this far it's a fair assumption you have a degree of both), all these motifs should be viewed as not just appropriate, but taken as a given. And though I'll readily concede many Americans (and for that matter, non-Americans), might have trouble with what is presented herein, given the stakes as they reveal themselves in the here and now, they are very much a vital part of that narrative.
In reality, the "no-win situation" seems an ideal metaphor for the empire as a whole -- if Americans dared to look long and hard enough. The irony of course is that by trying to 'win' -- economically, militarily, politically -- seemingly at all costs, it has ended up in this "no-win situation", its future pathway options as a consequence something of a Hobson's Choice.
Time then for our
first trip down memory lane.
The Ephemeral Empire
Throughout the Cold War from 1945-1991, by any measure George Kennan was a towering figure in the geopolitical firmament, a crucial player in the rarefied realm of post-World War II American foreign and national security policymaking. Born in 1904 in Minnesota and educated at Princeton University, Kennan was the original 'Sovietologist' and Cold War intellectual and policy wonk, and one of the so-called Wise Men of U.S. foreign policy.
Most notably, he was the acknowledged architect of the 'containment' principle, the cornerstone of the 'rules of engagement' by which America sought to manage (that is 'contain' rather than directly confront) the purported Soviet 'menace'. Loosely perceived and defined, the "menace" was Communist-inspired, 'full-spectrum domination' (hegemony) of the Big Blue Ball, accompanied by the overthrow of capitalism and the purging of the "bourgeoisie" represented by the ruling and much-reviled capitalist power elites.
It was of course this much-touted existential Soviet threat that both inspired and defined the Cold War itself. It both justified and precipitated the establishment of the apparatus of the National Security and Surveillance State, the so-called 'military-industrial complex'.
This "apparatus" included the creation and implementation of the not-entirely benign nor magnanimous Marshall Plan, along with the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA). That the Cold War was, like the Civil War before it, possibly more about economics (and empire) than ideology (or good guys v bad guys) is also a theme to which we will return.
Two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and four years before the eventual pear-shaped implosion of the Soviet Union, in a foreword to Norman Cousins' classic tome The Pathology of Power, Kennan -- presumably after having reflected long and hard on how his containment doctrine had played out in the preceding years since its inception and the implications this might have for America's future national interest -- had this to say:
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