A good overview of the geostrategic Zugzwang that the US empire is facing on three fronts: occupied Palestine, Iran and the broader West Asia, and Russia-Ukraine. The usual disclaimers apply as always when i recommend pieces by non-Marxist authors.
As i have previously explained in another post about an article by the same author, it is clear to me that they have reactionary inclinations. For this particular piece this results in a couple of noticeable annoyances:
One being the bad habit that quite a few geopolitical commentators from the conservative side have with bringing “eschatology” (and more generally metaphysics) into geopolitics. The other is calling anti-colonialism an “emerging religion” in an attempt to conflate it with idealistic/moralistic ideologies.
Both of these are clear symptoms of a lack of dialectical materialism in the author’s thinking. Feel free to ignore those parts as they are silly and would not have been included had this been written by a Marxist.
The rest of the analysis i would say is quite lucid, however glaringly incomplete as it entirely omits discussion of the biggest strategic Zugzwang of all for the US which is the unstoppable rise of China.
In all fairness however, that is a huge topic which needs a dedicated piece all its own just to scratch the surface.
A very interesting read. I agree with your critiques but I don’t think the author is totally off the mark in regards to Israel. I also wish they didn’t compare everything to the Roman empire as well, although those did seem like apt comparisons. I hope they write up something on China, Korea, Japan, the USA, and that whole thing.
Comparisons to the Roman empire bother me a lot less since I got into the financial side of US power
This is a new idea for me. I’d love to read about the similarities, where should I look?
He’s not wrong but i think he gets the primary and secondary contradictions reversed. He proposes an essentialist explanation for their behavior where as a Marxist i see a straightforwardly materialist one. The widespread religious psychosis is the result of the neo-colonial nature of the entity, not the other way around. The primary motivation of Zionism is material in nature, not religious. It is a neo-colonial project interested in land and resources first and foremost. And it is a proxy outpost for the very much material interests of the empire to control West Asia.
I think you’re right about that. Only the insane would go to such lengths for purely metaphysical reasons. Sorry I don’t have anything to add.