A comment by Uli Gellermann.
France’s President Macron has attested NATO as experiencing “brain death”. In fact, the near war between two NATO members, the US and Turkey, had all the features of a “brain death” military alliance: The body, i.e. the troops, were still moving, but those brain activities that gave meaning and purpose to the movements were obviously switched off. The Turkish NATO troops tried to destroy the Kurdish allies of the US NATO army.
A Russian revolutionary, V.I. Lenin, long ago said about imperialism that it was nothing but dying capitalism. Now capitalism seems as alive as ever: production records, consumption records and the domination of the world by a powerful, extremely dangerous U.S. army seem to strongly contradict an imminent death of the social system. And yet Lenin and Macron are not entirely removed from reality.
When it comes to dying, the image of rapid extinction prevails: The infarct, the abrupt end. But death has many manifestations. It is not uncommon for it to be slow and torturous. The death of modern capitalism in the form of NATO imperialism is more like the zombie status. NATO is the classic undead: apparently alive, horrifying figures run through the streets of the world and only hold themselves up by eating people. Zombies.
Just recently in Berlin, the US Secretary of State declared war on the Russians and Chinese. On the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Pompeo described the two countries as “regimes for which this anniversary is a fearful warning and no reason to celebrate”. To make sure everyone knows what to fear, he warns NATO members: “If countries think they can take advantage of NATO’s security guarantees without giving enough money to do so, without fulfilling their own promises, then NATO can become obsolete.
Obsolete, superfluous, sounds downright cute. As if the NATO states only had to stop paying and then leave the alliance cheerfully and without any obligation. But already on the way to the alleged end of NATO the zombie eats the peoples alive: The undead demands two percent of the gross domestic product so that he can continue to threaten the world. In Germany alone that would be 60 billion euros. That eats schools, roads, hospitals and ultimately the patients themselves.
Brain death: The Minister of Armaments recently stood in Munich in front of around 500 members of the Bundeswehr University and shrieked into the air: “We are experiencing authoritarian challenges to our open society. The people concerned were Russia and China. And to avoid misunderstandings: “We are, for example, the second largest provider of troops for the mission in Afghanistan. And continues: “Of course, Germany, like every other country in the world, has its own strategic interests. For example, as a globally networked trading nation in the heart of Europe.
This is the way it is with zombies: the mouth is still talking while the function of the brain has disappeared long ago. No healthy person would call on the officers of their own army to join the USA in the fight against Russia and China. No functioning brain would think of a trade war alongside the USA: the war with Iran, for example, which is in preparation. The war over the Strait of Hormuz.
But the German zombie, infected by the USA, continues: “Our partners in the Indo-Pacific region – above all Australia, Japan and South Korea, but also India – feel increasingly pressured by China’s claim to power. They want a clear sign of solidarity.” Kramp-Karrenbauer is inciting the officers to accompany the USA’s claim to power in the Pacific with “solidarity”. The type of solidarity that costs life and limb. With that solidarity which has long since been ridden to death in Afghanistan and which still triggers the Minister’s sick pride in the “second largest troop contributor”.
NATO is the highest expression of dying capitalism, a system that makes its profits through war and the threat of war. A system that eats up its states alive. A system that risks the atomic destruction of the earth to cement its own rule until the end of the capitalist horror film.
Picture source: miron82/shutterstock
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This article was published on the blog Rationalgalerie on 04. November 2019.
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