“Everything has to do with geography”
~ Judy Martz
By Catherine Austin Fitts
Geography contributes mightily to destiny. Yet, appreciation for geography is generally absent from the American education and mentality. We take our geographic abundance for granted.
In the Accidental Super Power: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder, Peter Zeihan reviews the geographical strengths and weaknesses of the United States and other leading nations. It is a useful discussion – one that Americans predicting the demise of the US economy would do well to read.
For example, I live in a farming community an hour from the Mississippi River. I appreciate Zeihan’s entertaining description of the strategic importance of America’s arable land and navigable rivers. After reading these sections, it is easy to understand why significant investment interests would go to great lengths to control the delta mouth of the Mississippi or to consolidate of ownership and control of US farmland.
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Demographics also contribute mightily to destiny. Zeihan combines his analysis of global geography with a hard look at what aging population and demographic winters are and could do in North America, Asia and Europe. If you want to understand the US imperative to encourage immigration of young people, of people with high tech skills and wealthy investors, you will get some perspective here.
Another useful aspect is Zeihan’s description of the Bretton Woods system put into place in 1944, how the world economy organized its production and distribution around the system, its current deterioration and the potential impact of this deterioration. Some of this discussion is useful context for a recommended read of Richard Haas’ recent article in Foreign Affairs, “The Unraveling,” describing the deterioration in the world order.
The withdrawal of the US and their Anglo American allies into a more self sufficient world is a strategic choice and does not necessarily mean the demise of the American position.
Unfortunately, The Accidental Superpower’s flaws are numerous and outrageous.
First, there is barely a mention of space. We are lead to believe that control of the planet is determined by the US Navy patrolling the sea lanes. GIS satellite systems and the command of the suborbital platform don’t count. How someone trained in the power and importance of geography can miss this one is inexplicable.
Indeed, he can’t miss it. Zeihan’s boss at Stratfor where he worked for many years, George Friedman, writes about it extensively (See The Next 100 Years and The Future of War).
Second, there is no mention of the hidden system of finance and black budget that has been driving the financial system since Bretton Woods. Zeihan’s description of global investment and capital flows is naïve in the extreme. Hence, it is not surprising that he leaves out a description of the build out of global equity markets and how this will affect change patterns of trade and realign incentives.
Third, there is barely a mention of the digital revolution underway. Zeihan does not explore the impact of a global population which can connect and communicate directly at low cost. Consequently, he does not address how this relates to the build out of infrastructure for a global currency.
Fourth, there is no mention of covert violence, the opening of the US consumer markets to narcotics trafficking after WWII and the promotion of narcotics trafficking and the financial fraud that the US has brought to bear globally as part of the Bretton Wood system. There is little discussion of the rich profits from currency debasement and the effort through GATT to reengineer seed and food production and distribution globally. (Listen to Sir James Goldsmith’s brilliant description here).
As a counterpoint, here is the description of the adoption of the Uruguay Round of GATT by Joseph E. Stiglitz in his recent piece in Vanity Fair
“The United States then made two critical mistakes. First, it inferred that its triumph meant a triumph for everything it stood for. But in much of the Third World, concerns about poverty—and the economic rights that had long been advocated by the left—remained paramount. The second mistake was to use the short period of its unilateral dominance, between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Lehman Brothers, to pursue its own narrow economic interests—or, more accurately, the economic interests of its multi-nationals, including its big banks—rather than to create a new, stable world order. The trade regime the U.S. pushed through in 1994, creating the World Trade Organization, was so unbalanced that, five years later, when another trade agreement was in the offing, the prospect led to riots in Seattle. Talking about free and fair trade, while insisting (for instance) on subsidies for its rich farmers, has cast the U.S. as hypocritical and self-serving.”
Finally, there is no mention of the UFO phenomenon. Zeihan makes a big deal about the contribution that US geography has made to national security. However, the UFO phenomenon has proved on numerous occasions that the US government does not control its air space – making it physically insecure.
While the disinformation surrounding the UFO phenomenon can waste more time than a thinking person has available, it is a reality that challenges the notion that the US enjoys national security. Some posit that all the UFO’s in our air space come from Area 51 or are holograms engineered by the US government or the “breakaway civilization.” If that is the case, then it is the US that is responsible for abducting its own citizens.
In defense of that theory, MK Ultra, Cointelpro, narcotics trafficking by US intelligence and enforcement agencies and the War on Drugs have certainly the US government and secret societies have been torturing, mind controlling, wrongfully imprisoning and killing US ctizens on the ground for decades.
In short, even if the US government and military is secure within its borders, its citizens are not – large portions of the US population live in a state of high insecurity.
The problem with limiting a discussion of geopolitics to the aspects of our reality which are socially acceptable to discuss, is that our management of global power will suffer the expense and complexity of the multiple personality disorder that is slowly but steadily destroying US intellectual and civil society. At some point, Zeihan is merely promoting what some segment of our society – some of whom I suspect have their offices in Langley, Virginia – want to hear.
In the late 90’s, I was invited to a dinner party in northern Virginia by a lovely woman who worked for a strategic planning group at the CIA. Two of the guests were a professor and his wife. The professor clearly did a lot of work for the Agency. I soon realized that the professor’s presence was not social– rather this was some superior’s idea of how I was going to “get on board.”
The professor’s goal – in which he failed – was to extract a confession from me that George W. Bush, then Governor of Texas, would make a great president. As I graciously declined to get on board, his behavior grew ever more appalling – loud, abrasive and verbally abusive. At the time, I was puzzling how to manage physical harassment at my home in Washington likely being done by the Agency or their contractors. Consequently, I decided that the ideal strategy was let him run his bully playbook out – to listen and learn, there being no interest on his part in reason. His embarrassed colleagues were intimidated by the directive that dictated the unpleasant show and were uncomfortably silent.
When you go about the world bullying people to adopt a false picture of reality, you create a world in which well-educated people like Peter Ziehan publish books that say “Oh, how fine are the Emperor’s new clothes!”
There is a line between opinion and propaganda. Despite its useful aspects, The Accidental Superpower crosses the line into propaganda.
I reject the notion that I must spend my intellectual life engaged by “Team America” propaganda on one hand and vitriolic predictions or adult fairy tales of America’s imminent demise on the other.
Where are the thinkers based in reality who are committed to nurturing the best of Western enlightenment and culture that are calling us to greatness?
That is what is of interest to me.
