The US has used its political, economic and military power to dominate world affairs since at least it’s emergence as a global power. 1898, and its war with Spain is deemed to be it’s first step onto the world stage with subsequent leaps after WWI and WWII. Already in 1854, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, under orders from his president Millard Fillmore, forcibly caused the end of Japan’s isolationist policy and opened it up to American trade. It’s true that the Dutch, who apart from the Chinese and Koreans were the only foreigners allowed in Japan, already had a trading post in Nagasaki and this is where the Japanese officials at Edo (modern Tokyo) wished Perry to dock, but he refused and threatened the use of force if not immediately allowed to present his letter from the President. In the end the Japanese conceded, unable to resist the military superiority of the Americans. He returned with a larger fleet months later and was met with a largely favorable response to Fillmore’s requests. These were ratified in the March 1854 Convention of Kanagawa which afforded trade between the US and Japan, guaranteed US property and safely of citizens. This method of negotiating foreign policy was coined ‘gunboat diplomacy’ and has been the main method of negotiating by subsequent US administrations to the present day.
The initial cause of the isolationist policy of the Japanese ruling shogunate was triggered by an insurrection encouraged by the first foreign travelers to Japan from Europe, the Portuguese, who were expelled in 1639 together with the banning of Christianity, execution of Japanese Christian converts and the banning of gunpowder weapons. It was Portuguese Jesuit missionaries who had caused the troubles and thereafter only the protestant Dutch were allowed trade residence on an island offshore from Nagasaki.
The US had a war with Spain in 1898 which led to Spanish territorial losses in the Pacific (Philippines and Guam) and the Caribbean (Cuba and Puerto Rico) and ended their empire in the Americas and Pacific.
The conflict between the US and Japan was largely economic. Japan had become aggressively expansionist after it’s previous period of isolation. Japan also saw the need to become a naval, military and industrial power, fuelled by it’s historical military past and realization of the need for a navy helped in part by Great Britain who aided them in providing the technology and skills to built both merchant and naval ships. The US viewed Japan’s expansionist ambitions with alarm given their newly acquired influence in the pacific region. After the invasion of northern China was condemned internationally, the US imposed economic sanctions on Japan who saw conflict as the only way to combat these. Faced with being a natural resource poor country, Japan needed access to the precious resources of coal, oil and other raw materials which were the bedrock of modern first world countries. Invading and acquiring the resource-rich parts of the asian mainland would provide those necessary raw materials for economic and political expansion. Failed and stalled negotiations with the US on sanction lifting led the Japanese to plan their attacks on key US/European military centers including Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong. Previous defeats of large countries - China and Russia - had instilled some confidence of success in the Japanese leadership but there were those who saw salvation for Japan only if the Americans would make more favorable terms in the face of a defeat to a pre-emptive strike by Japan rather than all out war.
Japan wanted to annex all of China, Malaysia, Burma, Korea, Thailand, India and Ceylon, and all of the islands in South East Asia including some of the far eastern Russian islands and part of the far eastern Russian mainland to the morth of China/Mongolia. It would also have commandeered mid-Pacific islands to counter US naval influence.
In one of the latest outrages against Europe, being blamed on Russia by the US-funded social media and mass media, is the deliberate sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. Although initial evidence, discovered by the Danes and the German operators, is of leakage from both pipelines, it is thought that this cannot be other than deliberate sabotage. Nord 1 has 2 pipelines and Nord 2 has one. The method looks like a submarine attack. The depth of the pipelines rules out any other method - although deep water depth charges could be a possibility.
To look for likely suspects we have to consider motive and means. It is thought, of the European powers, that only the UK and Germany have the capability and might be involved indirectly through American proxy. It is unlikely that the French, whilst having the means, would enter into such action. The UK has a much closer US partnership than Germany, so of the two would indicate they may be involved. Damaging the pipelines, which initially were initially set up to supply Germany with natural gas, seems an unlikely action by the Germans and not in their interests in the event if a resolution of the conflict in Ukraine.
It is felt that the US was fiercely against the Nord Stream natural gas supply from the beginning because the hawks in Washington felt it would lead to stronger partnership between Russia and Germany/the EU which is against US interests.
As for the action being Russian instigated… the Russians control the flow of gas, so would not have to damage the pipelines in order to disrupt delivery. It simply is not in their interests. As with the shelling of the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, the instigators based in Kiev, constantly blamed Russia for shelling the facility which was under it’s control and attempted to seize it by force when the IAEA inspectors were due to visit. In both cases blaming Russia is a red herring in the disinformation war surrounding the Ukraine conflict.
Ukraine could be a suspect but lacks the means. Their only submarine was seized by Russia after the Maidan and annexation of Crimea in 2014. Nevertheless they could be given the means by the US and used as a proxy as they are in the conflict on Ukrainian soil.
This puts focus on the US as being responsible for the sabotage whether directly or through a proxy agency. They clearly have the means having the largest submarine fleet in the world and the motivation of destroying any links between Russia and Germany/the EU. Policy decisions seem to be taken or rather made by the US and relayed to the UK and EU, in Washington, London and Brussels. Individual European states don’t seem to have the opportunity to discuss far less influence this strategy and these policies. So, again, it looks unlikely that Germany got to have a say in the plan, if indeed it was one, to sabotage NS1 and 2.
The Kremlin has suggested that nothing can be ruled out and that the underwater pipelines were intentionally damaged and demanded an immediate investigation.
Germany is blaming Ukraine or Russia (reported in Tagesspiegel newspaper) and suggesting it will push energy prices even higher. Nord Stream 2 was functional but unable to deliver gas due to political pressure and sanctions from the US. Nevertheless Nord Stream 1 could potentially have delivered gas to the EU.
A commentator, Gonzalo Lira, has suggested that the US deliberately wants to damage Europe, even though as an American ally, European countries have acquiesced to US policy. He suggests that it does not want Europe to benefit whilst its own situation is in decline and is happy to bring Europe down with it. In fact he described the American leadership as ‘evil’ a word, he suggested, he does not use lightly. The extremely negative consequences of all this will lead to, yet to be determined, levels of suffering by the majority of people in Europe not experienced for centuries. There will be dire shortages of gas, electricity and food over the coming months and possibly years as the existing ‘world order’ disintegrates and the dangers of political and social unrest, financial and welfare insecurity and poor outcomes for trade and industry in Europe and the US increase. The US is facing a major loss as mainly Eurasian countries move away from using the US$ as an international exchange currency in a move being described as ‘de-dollarisation’.
The US is also facing the advent of new alliances between non US/EU aligned countries such as The Russian Federation, People’s Republic of China, Pakistan, India, Iran and Turkey. This is a separate development from BRICS, the trade and economic partnership between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
It looks like Pakistan is keen to have a natural gas pipeline supply from Russia. Quite possibly China is already benefitting.
The US has ‘persuaded’ the German car industry not to supply the Chinese market with their products. Given that Chinese demand from the likes of BMW, VAG and Mercedes Benz was around 40-50 per cent of their output, this is a massive loss of sales for them.
The US has options that I believe they cannot succeed in: agitating for regime change (colour revolutions) in China, Russia, Turkey and the Baltic and western asian states. As well as the Russia/Ukraine conflict, the US already seem to be implemented in the Armenia/Azerbaijan, PRC/Taiwan, Kyrgyzstan/Tajikistan, Serbia/Kosovo conflicts as well as having a working group dedicated to undermining the leadership of Erdogan in Turkey. In other words, the US is firmly in the jaws of a Thucydides Trap.
The European Union (and the United States) are angry with Serbia given it’s cooperation with Russia. Both Russia and China does not recognise Kosovo. Furthermore, as stated by Ursula von der Leyen, the EU are unhappy with the outcome if the Italian elections. This is in addition to Hungary and Poland. The threat seems to be blocking EU funds to countries deemed to be ‘difficult’ ‘damaged democracies,’ countries that have governments democratically elected! These EU funds are given to help countries recover from the negative economic effects from the Covid pandemic. There are scenes in Italy of crowds protesting against these threats by the EU and replacing the EU flag with that of Italy.
In the UK, the pound has slumped against the US dollar to almost parity. Seven years ago I could buy 10 Renmin Yuan for £1. Today it’s 7. The ‘new’ UK government headed by Truss and Kwarteng seems to have triggered the slump by announcing large borrowing in conjunction with tax cuts in a ‘mini’ budget 23 September 2022 which caused widespread investor loss of confidence in the UK economy.
In fact the EU, supported by the US, held a summit to discuss the division, or Balkanisation, of the Russian Federation into 5 zones. It would have been a ‘Navalny’ plan of grabbing Russian natural resources first - in a similar way to the post Gorbachov de-Sovietisation era when nationalised resources were ‘privatised’ and made a lot of both Russian oligarchs and western individuals and organisations very, very rich.