WWIII: Convergence and Decline

Sachs, Wilkerson and Powell, via some good news. WWIII is because of ...

[Every Fu@cking Day, Mr. Fish]

Published: 2025-07-19

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We wend from some good news, via the jackboots of empire, to a clearer understanding of it, well known within the global majority and beginning to be simply expressed in the new media.

Good News

UN rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, has described the racket of international corporations which are profiting from the genocide in Gaza. The description was so accurate and achieved sufficient coverage that the forces which support the genocide have been forced to apply their usual tactics of slander and threats.

The National Education Association US teachers union:

voted to pass a Drop the Anti-Defamation League motion that rejects the ADL as a curriculum and professional development partner

[Marcy Winograd]

On top of the ongoing economic blockade imposed on Israel by Yemen's Ansar Allah and South Africa's (with 12 other nations) case at the UN's International Court of Justice, the result of a meeting in Colombia is that 12 nations committed to impose sanctions and utilize the international and their national judicial mechanisms to punish Israel for its now 650 day long genocide.

Another Albanese, Australia's Prime Minister, completed a 6 day visit to China.

When [Chinese President Xi Jinping] chose to host Albanese and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, personally, bypassing the traditional role of the premier, it wasn't just a three-course meal.

It was a display of serious personal and political investment.

[ABC]

Albanese balanced Australia's political, military and economic links with the US by paraphrasing China's first premier Zhou Enlai:

We will cooperate where we can, disagree where we must, and engage in our national interest.

[Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese]

By issuing this political message, even while US under-secretary of defense Elbridge Colby was throwing political hand-grenades of "What stance will you take in the scenario of a war with China?", Australia's Prime Minister was positioning the nation within the historic, diplomatic milieu of southeast Asia. How and why this is the case was dispassionately described by University of Queensland Adjunct Professor Warwick Powell in discussion with Professor Glenn Diesen.

As the nations outside of the influence orbit of the US hegemonic Political West rise in political and economic power, a new space is being created for minor powers, like Australia, to assert increasing international political independence. The same is true of other US allies in the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan and South Korea.

The time for advice from former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating for the nation to seek security within southeast Asia, not from it, may be arriving.

Sticking with Australia, in Wertheim v Haddad, Federal Court Justice Stewart ruled that criticism of Israel's political actions is not antisemitism. This precedent will provide victims of slander and abuse from the Zionist lobby with a legal defense.

Industrialization, Colonial and neo-Colonial Empires

Professor of Economics Michael Hudson has for decades described the economic abuse by the US and its partners in Europe, via banking institutions created within the Bretton Woods model, namely the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, to prevent the economic development of nations which became independent after WWII. Recently, in discussion with Diesen, he expanded his timeline back to the origins of international banking, the Crusades. Within this he places industrial capitalism of the 19th and early 20th century, and describes the economic reforms which were required to enable that industrialization. Through this, he illuminates how the Political West deliberately prevented the post WWII, newly independent nations from achieving the same reforms.

Just a few days previous, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson brought John Maynard Keynes' treatise on the industrial background for the English and French colonial empires preceding WWI to his interview with Nima Alkhorshid.

Keynes’ analysis shows the motives for their European civil war (WWI) against the then more industrially advanced nascent German empire. WWI begot WWII, the culmination of which did not save the British and French empires, but destroyed them. They were, more correctly, absorbed into the growing US empire.

Wilkerson's purpose in raising Keynes' work was to draw a parallel with WWIII which he believes is currently being fought to save the US empire. The perils inherent in this global conflict are not just the end of US hegemony, but also that of nuclear war. Never before has a great empire armed with nuclear weapons faced its decline.

Wither the Hegemon?

Diesen asked Professor Jeffrey Sachs about the current trajectory of the US. Is it on a path the become a great nation, "first among equals", in a multipolar world, or risking itself attempting to maintain its hegemony?

Before reaching the Sachs' conclusion one can observe that the US is currently attempting to push the military and international trade cost of maintaining its empire onto its client states, both in Europe and the "Indo-Pacific". Brian Berletic has been citing US foreign policy documents which stress the importance of "divsion of labor" and "strategic sequencing". "Division of labor" maeans burden sharing of the cost of empire. "Strategic sequencing" is because the US can only engage its "opponents" one nation at a time. Both of these indicate the fragility of the its hegemony.

In responding to Diesen's question based on the decline of the empire, Sachs' began by rephrasing it. No, said Sachs, it is not that the West is declining, but that the rest of the world is catching up. Professor of Economics Sachs did not refer to Hudson's millennium wide analysis of banking and the last 80 years of US geoeconomic engineering. He did, however, note that the post WWII, newly independent states, including China, which have succeeded in achieving some economic independence via industrialization, along the same path as the West, have done so via investments in education and infrastructure. As this newsletter has noted, China contains 80% of the leading 10 research Universities in the world. It possess the most advanced industrial manufacturing.

It was during Warwick Powell's discussion with Diesen that Powell mentioned one of China's "strategic deterrence" missiles. It travels at Mach 27 and separates into 10 independent nuclear warheads. It traverses the Pacific in 7 minutes.

To answer Diesen's question of why the US, leading the Political West, is choosing to attempt to maintain its hegemony through kinetic and economic violence rather the find a modus vivendi with the global majority, he chose psychology over economics. The financial answer, paralleling Francesca Albanese's work, that powerful interest groups are profiting from the immoral violence is true, but insufficient.

Reaching Sachs' conclusion requires discarding so oft used and vapid adjectives like Hubris. Yes, there is cultural arrogance among the war profiteers. And, yes, these influence groups seem blind to the medium term consequences of their profiteering. It is, however, not just avarice and hubris, but a collection of zealotries which underpin the reckless drive. Some of these dogma are expressed as fundamentalist religious or biblical zealotries.

The unifying characteristic, however, above profiteering and religious dogma, is an ancient poison. The Political West cannot accept itself among equals, noted Sachs, a fact well understood in the global majority, is because of:

Racism

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Sources

Lobby Fumes as US Teachers Drop Zionist Curriculum; Marcy Winograd; Consortium News; 2025-07-17

Hague Group Confronts Israel Over Gaza; Mick Hall; Consortium News; 2025-07-18

In a Historic Gathering, 12 Countries Announce Israel Sanctions and Renewed Legal Action To End Gaza Genocide; María F. Fitzgerald (Mondoweiss 2025-07-17); (republished at) ScheerPost; 2025-07-18

China sees Australia as the Western partner worth resetting with and Anthony Albanese made it happen; Bang Xiao; abc; 2025-07-15

Kostakidis to go before court, after judiciary recognises anti-Zionism is not antisemitism; Paul Gregoire; Pearls & Irritations; 2025-07-13

Wertheim v Haddad [2025]; Justice Stewart; Federal Court of Australia; 2025-07-01

The U.S. Empire's Plan for Global Domination,; Michael Hudson; The Unz Review; 2025-06-27

Interesting Articles: Mid July, 2025; YesXorNo; 2025-07-13

Warwick Powell: The US Prepares Japan & Australia for War with China; Diesen interviews Powell; Glenn's Substack; 2025-07-16

Michael Hudson: The Economics of a Civilizational Conflict; Diesen interviews Hudson; Glenn's Substack; 2025-07-17

Jeffrey Sachs: End of the Western-Centric World & Rise of BRICS; Glenn Diesen; Glenn's Substack; 2025-07-16

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