Henry Kissinger
thinks the Coronavirus is a threat to his precious New World Order, so
he wants President Trump to do whatever he can to protect the system. In
an opinion piece that was published in the Wall Street Journal on
Friday, the former Secretary of State urged Trump to launch a grand
project, like the Marshall Plan, to unify the allies and convince them
that the Uncle Sam can still rally the troops in a time of crisis.
Here’s Kissinger:
“Drawing lessons from the development of the Marshall Plan and the Manhattan Project, the U.S. is obliged to undertake a major effort in three domains. First, shore up global resilience to infectious disease…Second, strive to heal the wounds to the world economy….Third, safeguard the principles of the liberal world order.While the assault on human health will—hopefully—be temporary, the political and economic upheaval it has unleashed could last for generations. No country, not even the U.S., can in a purely national effort overcome the virus. Addressing the necessities of the moment must ultimately be coupled with a global collaborative vision and program. If we cannot do both in tandem, we will face the worst of each.” (“The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order”, Wall Street Journal)
Kissinger thinks
Trump’s “America First” rhetoric has undermined foreign relations and
weakened US hegemony. He thinks the administration’s isolationist
policies have created a leadership vacuum that China has quickly filled.
And he has a point, too, after all, while China sent medical teams and
vital supplies to countries hard-hit by the virus, the United States was
busy tightening sanctions on Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, which prevented
infected civilians from getting the medications they need to survive.
Naturally, China’s humanitarian contributions have been widely applauded
while Washington’s conduct has been denounced as petty, vicious and
vindictive. There’s no doubt that the Trump administration has ceded the
moral high-ground to its arch-enemy, China. Here’s Kissinger again:
“Now, in a divided country, efficient and farsighted government is necessary to overcome obstacles unprecedented in magnitude and global scope. Sustaining the public trust is crucial to social solidarity, to the relation of societies with each other, and to international peace and stability.” WSJ
Of course, when
Kissinger talks about “public trust” and “social solidarity” what he
really means is that the government needs to settle on an effective
public relations strategy that will dupe the sheeple into falling in
line. In Kissinger’s lexicon, solidarity is narrowly defined as ‘public
support for elitist projects’ like globalization, open borders and the
free movement of capital. These are the principles that guide
Kissinger’s recommendations not any affection for working people who he
regards as stupid mules. Here’s more:
“Nations cohere and flourish on the belief that their institutions can foresee calamity, arrest its impact and restore stability. When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed. Whether this judgment is objectively fair is irrelevant. The reality is the world will never be the same after the coronavirus. To argue now about the past only makes it harder to do what has to be done.” WSJ
See? What really
Kissinger really cares about is the post-coronavirus world order, which
he believes will mark the beginning of an entirely new era, an era in
which governments will have to respond to unexpected crises, bitter
political polarization and the growing prospect of social unrest.
Kissinger seems to grasp all of this, but instead of offering a new
vision for the future, he clings to the battered remains of a failed
system that has exacerbated the wealth gap, triggered one
economy-crushing financial meltdown after the other, and widened the arc
of instability from North Africa, through the Middle East and into
Central Asia. This is the world order that Kissinger wants to preserve,
an America-centric imperium ruled by establishment elites,
brandy-drooling plutocrats and the Bank Mafia. Is it any wonder why the
proles are demanding change? Here’s more:
“The world’s democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values. A global retreat from balancing power with legitimacy will cause the social contract to disintegrate both domestically and internationally.” WSJ
“Enlightenment
values”?? Is that what we saw in the photos from Abu Ghraib, or the
footage from decimated Falluja, or the countless reports of black-sites
where kidnapped victims were taken by US Intel Agents and beaten into
submission? Do they practice enlightenment values at Gitmo, or at Bagram
Air base or in Mosul which was reduced to rubble by heavy artillery and
US bombers? Kissinger can blabber about enlightenment values all he
wants, but he knows from first hand experience that those values are
precariously propped atop a mountain of bloody corpses all sacrificed in
the name of the liberal world order. Here’s more:
“Enlightenment thinkers (argued) that the purpose of the legitimate state is to provide for the fundamental needs of the people: security, order, economic well-being, and justice. Individuals cannot secure these things on their own. The pandemic has prompted an anachronism, a revival of the walled city in an age when prosperity depends on global trade and movement of people.” WSJ
There it is
again, Kissinger’s favorite theme, ” global trade and movement of
people”, the two crumbling pillars of a globalization project that is
now on life-support waiting to be euthanized by the millions of
unemployed Americans who saw their jobs, their factories and their hopes
for the future all go up in smoke due to outsourcing, off-shoring and
Kissinger’s glorious “liberal world order.” Even now, while the US
economy grinds to a standstill and jobless American workers wait
anxiously by their doors for their $1,200 pittance from Uncle Sam,
Kissinger continues to bray about the wonderful NWO that has greatly
enhanced “security, order, economic well-being, and justice”.
Give me a break.
I agree with
Kissinger that the post-Covid world order will be significantly
different from the world that preceded it, but that’s as far as I’ll go.
In truth, the US-dominated system is unraveling because the people of
the world don’t want to ruled by force, because US leaders are
incompetent bunglers who cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and
because Washington’s arrogant go-it-alone policy-making has turned vast
areas of the Middle East and Central Asia into uninhabitable wastelands.
Let’s face it,
the United States had a chance to show the world it could be a reliable
steward of global security, and they blew it. Nothing Kissinger says is
going to change that.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Mike Whitney, Global Research, 2020
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