Turbo-America
The USA and its quest for Full-Spectrum Dominance across the globe
“Don’t get me into a shooting war with the Russians”, Obama told his CIA Chief during the Syrian Civil War.
This quote has resonance, because it testifies the fact that different parts of the massive US Government work largely independent of one another, sometimes at cross-purposes. Syria (again) provides us example of this when a conflict broke out between the CIA-backed Sunni Islamist jihadis and the US DoD-backed Kurds in Northern Syria.
“The USA is” or “the USA wants”, are easy and lazy mental shortcuts that allow people to assume that the world’s greatest superpower is united in purpose, when the fact of the matter is that there are different power centres, each with their own agendas, and that these agendas can sometimes align through “buy ins” with other power centres to focus on a given target. This results in the expansion (or failed expansion) of US Empire on the global stage, and this is the subject of this essay.
Turbo-America
There has been a significant debate taking place not just on the internet between anonymous people and the occasional journalist who wades into the action, but also behind closed doors in various, relevant parts of the US Government as to whether the USA should pivot more quickly to China, or deal with Russia first, or both. But first, an explanation:
In International Relations (IR) Theory, the world is divided between hegemons (those in power), revisionist states (those seeking to change, reform, or end the current hegemonic condition and possibly replace them as hegemon), and free-riders (those that benefit from the present hegemon). The USA has been seeking to tame revisionist powers since the end of the Cold War, each in their own theatre. The following states are “revisionist” in IR terms:
China
Russia
Iran
North Korea
Three of the above are in possession of nuclear weapons, with Iran seeking to join the club. The USA, as current hegemon, seeks to prevent the rise of threats to its hegemonic status. This can be done in various ways, from armed conflict through to economic sanctions, and everything in between.
There are those like Henry Kissinger who seek to do a “Nixon Goes to China”, but in reverse, whereby the USA engages in détente with Russia to bring it onside in a showdown with China over who gets to be the primary power in East Asia. These people view China as the greater threat, when compared to Russia, to US interests. This coloured the tone of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy as it was the first to take China on, by launching a failed rebellion in Hong Kong, by publicizing accusations of genocide in Xinjiang against the Uighurs there, and by slapping tariffs onto Chinese goods destined for the US market. COVID-19 caused a pause in the escalation of the US targeting Beijing.
There are others who insist that Russia is the greater threat to US interests and seek to surround and neutralize Moscow’s ability to engage in nuclear deterrence. Full-Spectrum Dominance is the concept whereby a military has complete control over all dimensions of any potential battlefield. It order to achieve Full-Spectrum Dominance, a state must have Nuclear Primacy, i.e. the ability to win in a nuclear war, whereby the other side’s nuclear arsenal is wiped out before it can launch any of its missiles. Russia’s nuclear arsenal is the only present roadblock towards American Full-Spectrum Dominance, which is not just why many US foreign policy planners seek to defeat the Russians first, but is also a large part of why this war in Ukraine is taking place at present.
Still others want to go for gold and take on BOTH China and Russia at the same time. This screams of hubris, and we can now safely conclude that the various moving parts of the USGov and non-governmental centres of power have agreed on this approach. The drive for global hegemony whereby both China AND Russia are targeted simultaneously is what I mean by the term “Turbo America”.
America: Never More United, Never More Powerful Than It Is Today
I get a lot of shit when I bluntly state that the USA has never been more powerful than it is today. People will point to the USA’s de-industrialization, its opiate-death crisis, its falling living standards, its disappearing middle class, crumbling infrastructure, the growing divide between red and blue states, and the collective meltdown of half of America thanks to Trump’s surprise win in 2016. All of these points are valid, but they also mean fuck all in the greater scheme of things.