I think you are on point with all counts. It’s gamesmanship and I suppose advantageous for the US. I just get tired of the false pretense that is played.
Just saw this comment on a video and it sums it up pretty well:
The United States, as a hegemon, has historically relied on a trinity of control mechanisms:
1) covert action and plausible deniability,
2) institutional legitimacy (IMF, World Bank, UN), and
3) persuasive narrative ("promoting democracy," "rules-based order").
The decline in relative U.S. power, the rise of multipolarity (China, BRICS+), and the exhaustion of credibility after decades of failed interventions (Iraq, Libya, Syria) have corroded these pillars.
Consequently, the empire can no longer afford the patient, subtle manipulation of the Cold War era.
It is forced to pursue its foundational interests—resource control, geopolitical dominance—through increasingly overt, kinetic, and blatant means.
The failed paramilitary incursion in Venezuela and the open discussion of seizing its oil are not anomalies but templates of this new, desperate mode.
The comparison between the covert, deniable 1982 Siberian pipeline sabotage and the spectacular, thinly-veiled 2022 Nord Stream destruction is central to this thesis. It illustrates the degeneration of the covert toolkit from a surgical scalpel to a crude sledgehammer.
When you can no longer secretly manipulate, you must openly destroy and intimidate.
What this portends is a period of heightened systemic risk and chaotic transition.
The portends a fatal feedback loop:
1. Accelerated Delegitimization: Each blatant act further erodes the remaining soft power and trust, speeding up the very processes of dedollarization and anti-hegemonic alignment it aims to prevent.
2. Normative Boomerang: By abandoning the rules of sovereignty and non-interference it once nominally upheld, the declining hegemon sets a precedent. It invites other powers to act with similar ruthlessness in a future where its power may be insufficient to shield it from reciprocal actions.
3. Extreme Miscalculation: A strategy of desperation, characterized by "maximum pressure" and hair-trigger confrontations (e.g., with nuclear powers like Russia or China), drastically increases the probability of a catastrophic, unintended escalation. A system in frantic decline is prone to fatal crashes.
The United States, as a hegemon, has historically relied on a trinity of control mechanisms:
1) covert action and plausible deniability,
2) institutional legitimacy (IMF, World Bank, UN), and
3) persuasive narrative ("promoting democracy," "rules-based order").
The decline in relative U.S. power, the rise of multipolarity (China, BRICS+), and the exhaustion of credibility after decades of failed interventions (Iraq, Libya, Syria) have corroded these pillars.
Consequently, the empire can no longer afford the patient, subtle manipulation of the Cold War era.
It is forced to pursue its foundational interests—resource control, geopolitical dominance—through increasingly overt, kinetic, and blatant means.
The failed paramilitary incursion in Venezuela and the open discussion of seizing its oil are not anomalies but templates of this new, desperate mode.
The comparison between the covert, deniable 1982 Siberian pipeline sabotage and the spectacular, thinly-veiled 2022 Nord Stream destruction is central to this thesis. It illustrates the degeneration of the covert toolkit from a surgical scalpel to a crude sledgehammer.
When you can no longer secretly manipulate, you must openly destroy and intimidate.
What this portends is a period of heightened systemic risk and chaotic transition.
The portends a fatal feedback loop:
1. Accelerated Delegitimization: Each blatant act further erodes the remaining soft power and trust, speeding up the very processes of dedollarization and anti-hegemonic alignment it aims to prevent.
2. Normative Boomerang: By abandoning the rules of sovereignty and non-interference it once nominally upheld, the declining hegemon sets a precedent. It invites other powers to act with similar ruthlessness in a future where its power may be insufficient to shield it from reciprocal actions.
3. Extreme Miscalculation: A strategy of desperation, characterized by "maximum pressure" and hair-trigger confrontations (e.g., with nuclear powers like Russia or China), drastically increases the probability of a catastrophic, unintended escalation. A system in frantic decline is prone to fatal crashes.
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