U.S. Strategic Aim: Break and Dismember Russia; or Maintain U.S. Dollar Hegemony? Or a Muddled ‘Both’?
The West cannot relinquish the sense of itself at the centre of the Universe, albeit no longer in a racial sense, Alastair Crooke writes.
A strategic aim would require a unitary purpose that could be succinctly outlined. It would require additionally a compelling clarity about the means by which the aim would be achieved and a coherent vision about what a successful outcome would actually look like.
Winston Churchill described the aim of WW2 as the destruction of Germany. But this was ‘platitude’, and no strategy. Why was Germany to be destroyed? What interest did destroying such a major trading partner achieve? Was it to save the imperial trading system? The latter failed (after ‘Suez’) and Germany went into a deep recession. So, what was the end result intended to be? At one point, a completely de-industrialised, pastoralised Germany was postulated as the (improbable) endgame.
Churchill opted for rhetoric and ambiguity.
Is the English-speaking world today any clearer about its strategic aims with its war on Russia than then? Is its strategy really that of destroying and dismembering Russia? If so, to what precise end (as ‘the jump-off’ to war on China?). And how is Russia’s destruction – a major land-power – to be accomplished by states whose strengths are primarily naval and air power? And what would follow? A Babel Tower of clashing Asian statelets?
The destruction of Germany (an ancient dominant cultural power) was a Churchillian rhetorical flourish (good for morale), but not strategy. In the end, it was Russia that made the decisive intervention in the Second War. And Britain ended the war financially bust (with huge debts) – a dependency, and hostage to Washington.
Then, as now, there were muddled, conflicting aims: From the era of the Boer war, the British Establishment feared losing its ‘jewel in the crown’ of trade in the natural resources of the East to Germany’s putative ambition to itself become a trading ‘empire’.
In short, Britain’s aim was the maintenance of hegemony over the raw materials derived from Empire (one-third of the globe), that then, were locking-down Britain’s economic primacy. This was the primordial consideration within that inner circle of Establishment thinkers – together with intent to enlist the U.S. to the conflict.
Today we live a narcissism that has eclipsed strategic thought: The West cannot relinquish the sense of itself at the centre of the Universe (albeit no longer in a racial sense, but through its substitution of victim politics requiring endless redress, as its claim to global moral primacy).
Yet at bottom, the strategic aim of today’s U.S.-led war on Russia is to maintain America’s dollar hegemony – thus striking a resonant note with Britain’s struggle to maintain its lucrative primacy over much of the world’s resources, as much as to explode Russia as a political competitor. The point is that these two objectives do not overlap – but may pull in different directions.
Churchill also pursued two quite divergent ‘aspirations’ – and in retrospect, achieved neither. War with Germany did not consolidate Britain’s hold over global resources; rather, with continental Europe in ruins, London lay itself open to the
Article from LewRockwell
