NO MORE GRAND CHESSBOARD?

Many people shared this article, and it's well worth pondering, as it seems the perpetually vowel-impaired Zbgnw Brzznsk is rethinking his grand chessboard idea:

The Broken Chessboard: Brzezinski Gives Up On Empire

I cite from the beginning of the article:

The main architect of Washington’s plan to rule the world has abandoned the scheme and called for the forging of ties with Russia and China. While Zbigniew Brzezinski’s article in The American Interest titled “Towards a Global Realignment” has largely been ignored by the media, it shows that powerful members of the policymaking establishment no longer believe that Washington will prevail in its quest to extent US hegemony across the Middle East and Asia. Brzezinski, who was the main proponent of this idea and who drew up the blueprint for imperial expansion in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, has done an about-face and called for a dramatic revising of the strategy. Here’s an excerpt from the article in the AI:

“As its era of global dominance ends, the United States needs to take the lead in realigning the global power architecture.

Five basic verities regarding the emerging redistribution of global political power and the violent political awakening in the Middle East are signaling the coming of a new global realignment.

The first of these verities is that the United States is still the world’s politically, economically, and militarily most powerful entity but, given complex geopolitical shifts in regional balances, it is no longer the globally imperial power.”

(Toward a Global Realignment, Zbigniew Brzezinski, The American Interest)

Repeat: The US is “no longer the globally imperial power.” Compare this assessment to a statement Brzezinski made years earlier in Chessboard when he claimed the US was ” the world’s paramount power.”

“…The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world’s paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power.” (“The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives,” Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 1997, p. xiii)

The real question is why Mr. Brzznsk would choose this moment to announce what is, in effect, for him a 180 degree reversal, when in fact it has been he who has been quietly behind the expansion of the US's role in the Middle East in recent years, and he who, along with Darth Soros, have been pushing and goading confrontations in Russia. (Remember the Russian invasion of South Ossetia during the Beijng Olympics in 2008?) When one looks back over the long list of US interventions in the Middle East since 9/11, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria, Lybia, and beyond, think of the vowel-impaired name of Mr. Zbgnw Brzznsk.

By admitting the need to "lead" the realignment, Mr. Brzznsk is in effect admitting that his "Grand Chessboard" - and his policies - have been an utter failure.

So why release this piece now? I submit that Mr. Brzznsk's piece is perhaps yet another bit of evidence that there is deep factional infighting within the U.S. deep state, and that even the most hawkish exponents of American "exceptionalism" and "unipolarism" such as Brzznsk see the handwriting on the wall, and that now, during this election cycle, is when the moment to avoid crisis has come. As I've urged in various conversations and interviews and more recently in my website's members vidchats, I believe this current US election is really not an election at all, but increasingly acquiring more the status of a referendum on past policies and directions.

The article hints of this by pointing out the election timing of Mr. Brzznsk's about-face:

The Obama administration’s reckless foreign policy, particularly the toppling of governments in Libya and Ukraine, has greatly accelerated the rate at which these anti-American coalitions have formed. In other words, Washington’s enemies have emerged in response to Washington’s behavior. Obama can only blame himself.

Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin has responded to the growing threat of regional instability and the placing of NATO forces on Russia’s borders by strengthening alliances with countries on Russia’s perimeter and across the Middle East. At the same time, Putin and his colleagues in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries have established an alternate banking system (BRICS Bank and AIIB) that will eventually challenge the dollar-dominated system that is the source of US global power. This is why Brzezinski has done a quick 180 and abandoned the plan for US hegemony; it is because he is concerned about the dangers of a non-dollar-based system arising among the developing and unaligned countries that would replace the western Central Bank oligopoly. If that happens, then the US will lose its stranglehold on the global economy and the extortionist system whereby fishwrap greenbacks are exchanged for valuable goods and services will come to an end.

Unfortunately, Brzezinski’s more cautious approach is not likely to be followed by presidential-favorite Hillary Clinton who is a firm believer in imperial expansion through force of arms. It was Clinton who first introduced “pivot” to the strategic lexicon in a speech she gave in 2010 titled “America’s Pacific Century”.

And this:

Compare Clinton’s speech to comments Brzezinski made in Chessboard 14 years earlier:

“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… (p.30)….. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. ….About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (p.31)

The strategic objectives are identical, the only difference is that Brzezinski has made a course correction based on changing circumstances and the growing resistance to US bullying, domination and sanctions. We have not yet reached the tipping point for US primacy, but that day is fast approaching and Brzezinski knows it.

In contrast, Clinton is still fully-committed to expanding US hegemony across Asia. She doesn’t understand the risks this poses for the country or the world. She’s going to persist with the interventions until the US war-making juggernaut is stopped dead-in-its-tracks which, judging by her hyperbolic rhetoric, will probably happen some time in her first term.

Brzezinski presents a rational but self-serving plan to climb-down, minimize future conflicts, avoid a nuclear conflagration and preserve the global order. (aka–The “dollar system”) But will bloodthirsty Hillary follow his advice?

It may be a case of too little, too late. But whatever one makes of Mr. Brzznsk's about-face, the fact remains that his statements probably represent an emerging consensus within a growing segment of the American deep state. This does not mean they are ready to jump on Mr. Trump's bandwagon either, for they, and Mr. Brzznsk, remain committed globalists. But it does mean they they definitely want to put the brakes on the growing tendency of the neocon establishment to rely on military interventions. The problem for Mr. Brzznsk and Company is rather difficult, for it remains to be seen if Darth Soros, Sith, and Associates will "get the message."

See you on the flip side...