Dancing On The Edge Of Oblivion

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.44.3-4.0126
• Published date: 04 November 2022
• Date: 04 November 2022
• Pages: 126-153
• Author: Liana M. Petranek

www.plutojournals.com/asq/

DANCING ON THE EDGE OF OBLIVION

Liana M. Petranek

Abstract: This article discusses the current precarious state of the US economy vis-à-vis

the rise of China and the US proxy war in Ukraine. It discusses the problematic of a capi-

talist economy and the fundamental requirement of capital accumulation to avert and

circumvent capitalist cyclical crises. It also discusses the methodology of accumulation,

the law of value and the necessity of geographic hegemonic control in order to sustain

homeostasis within a capitalist economy. Brought into the discussion is the effect such

a dynamic imposes upon not only the hegemons (US, EU, Russia, and China) within the

global economy but also the population and environment that such an unrelenting mis-

sion imposes upon the ecology and geopolitical state of affairs. In response to the endog-

enous exigencies of capital accumulation and the exogenous threats that such projects

as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Russia’s interests as an Eastern European

hegemon present, US foreign policy is designed as strategies (“strategy of containment”

in reference to Russia after World War II and now the “strategy of denial” to contain the

influence China presents as a world hegemon). Also, policy changes that are codified, such

as the Bush Doctrine and the National Security Strategy of the United States of America pro-

vided legal rationalization and protection for the US to pursue practices that contravened

international law i.e. the Geneva Conventions. China has emerged as a world hegemon

and is ubiquitously engaging on the world stage especially in Eastern, Western and South

Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, South and Central America, and Mexico. The

country is becoming a threat to US capitalist interest with their “natural partnerships,”

with their China–Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF), with their 1+2+3 Cooperation

Frameworks, and with their 4 Action Plans within these countries. These Chinese initia-

tives as actions are seen to be destabilizing what the US calls “the balance of power” and

“the rules-based order” within the global economy. The US is counteracting the threat to

US capital accumulation with its neoliberal and neocon agenda, mostly formulated by the

main actors within the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) who play an important role in

formulating US foreign policy in the interest of US capital and the US military industrial

complex. The US is implementing this with the postulates outlined in the 2021 book The

Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict by Eldridge A. Colby

and his fellow cohorts within the CFR who formulated the theory and particulars of the

strategy that the US is currently pursuing.

Associate editor of Arab Studies Quarterly and Affiliate Faculty of Ethnic Studies, University of

Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Honolulu, USA.

DOI:10.13169/arabstudquar.44.3 & 4 0126

DANCING ON THE EDGE OF OBLIVION 127

ASQ 44.3 & 4 Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals

Keywords: Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), proxy wars,

hegemony, capital accumulation, law of value, capitalist cyclical crises, China–Arab States

Cooperation Forum (CASCF), natural partners, strategy of denial.

Introduction

On October 3, 2007, at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco,

Retired Four Star General, Wesley Clark,1 gave a speech about the US invasion

of Iraq and US foreign policy in the region.2 He said that ten days after 9/11 he

went to the Pentagon. While there he made a brief stop at the office of Donald

Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense under W. Bush (2000–08), who, while discuss-

ing 9/11 told him, “Nobody is going to tell us when and where to bomb.” He said

he was thinking about calling this a “floating coalition” and asked Clark what he

thought about that. As Clark was leaving the Pentagon, an officer from the Joint

Chief of Staff called him into his office and told him that he wanted him to know

that we (the US) were going to attack Iraq. Clark said “But why?” The officer said,

“I don’t know. I guess we don’t know what else to do.”

Clark came back to the Pentagon six weeks later and saw the same officer and

asked him if the US were still going to attack Iraq. The Officer said, “Oh sir, its

worse than that. I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s Office and it

says we are going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five

years. We are going to start with Iraq, move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia,

Sudan, and Iran.” Wesley Clark said he was “stunned” by this information.

Since Clark had some time while there, he went to visit Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy

of Defense 1989–93 who told Clark that after the 1991 Shia uprising in March

following Desert Storm under H. W. Bush (which the US provoked but kept troops

on the sidelines while it was carried out), that they learned that they could use our

military in the region, “and the Soviets won’t stop us.” He told Clark that they

have 5–10 years “to clean up these old soviet client regimes—Syria, Iran, Iraq …

before the next great super power comes on to challenge us.”

When discussing these events Clark said that what he was witnessing was an

American foreign policy “coup.” He said, “we didn’t have a strategy, we didn’t

have bipartisan agreement, … some hard nosed people took over the direction of

American policy and they never bothered to inform the rest of us” (Ibid.).

On a Democracy Now! show (7/1/21) “He Was a Disaster: Retired Colonel

Andrew Bacevich on Donald Rumsfeld’s Legacy as architect of the Iraq War,”3

Colonel Bacevich4 discusses the “forever wars” in the Middle East with Amy

Goodman saying that Rumsfeld was “catastrophically bad and a failed Defense