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Washingtons New Cold War

Metadata

  • Author: [[Vijay Prashad, John Bellamy Foster, John Ross, and Deborah Veneziale]]
  • ASIN: B0BHY1ZKQT
  • Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BHY1ZKQT
  • Kindle link

Highlights

This attitude—short term pain, long-term gain— is the defining hallucination of the elites in the United States, who are unwilling to tolerate the project of building human dignity and the longevity of nature. — location: 62 ^ref-4871

From 2015–2019, Ukraine’s military budget increased from $1.7 billion to $8.9 billion, — location: 130 ^ref-11243

In December 2021, aware of the growing danger it faced from Ukraine under U.S. influence, Russia sought a set of security guarantees from NATO to defuse the crisis. — location: 142 ^ref-14851

“knowing that preparations for the invasion of Donbass [were] in full swing. — location: 145 ^ref-51771

permanent, the clear conclusion of this author is that the trend of U.S. military escalation will continue. — location: 175 ^ref-20383

the U.S. may attempt to compensate for its relative economic decline through its use of military force. — location: 185 ^ref-16690

the United States used its military pressure to increase the economic subordination of Germany and Japan. — location: 284 ^ref-5817

Two fundamental lessons can be drawn from the events leading to the war in Ukraine. First, it confirms that it is pointless to ask the United States for compassion. — location: 295 ^ref-14991

the outcome of the war in Ukraine is crucial not only for Russia, but also for China and for the entire world. — location: 301 ^ref-23778

History clearly shows that the U.S. has been prepared to carry out the most extremely violent military aggression to the point of being willing to destroy entire countries. In one of many examples, in the Korean War, the U.S. destroyed nearly all of North Korea’s cities and towns, including an estimated 85 percent of its buildings. — location: 315 ^ref-31767

the evidence shows that there is no level of crime or atrocity to which the United States is not prepared to descend. — location: 336 ^ref-22797

The overall trend of United States policy since the Second World War shows a clear and logical pattern. When the United States feels that it is in a strong position, its policy is aggressive; when it feels weakened, it becomes more conciliatory. This was shown most dramatically before, during, and after the Vietnam War, but also in other periods. — location: 347 ^ref-57810

as it felt weakened, the United States displayed a more cooperative attitude toward China in these areas. — location: 364 ^ref-43750

The ruling political party in China, the Kuomintang, concentrated its efforts for most of the 1930s not on repelling Japan but on fighting the communists. — location: 374 ^ref-13697

if the United States achieves victories in more limited struggles, it will likely be encouraged to move toward a major global military conflict. — location: 384 ^ref-41668

it is of utmost importance that the United States does not win immediate struggles, such as the war it provoked in Ukraine, its attempt to undermine the One China policy with regard to Taiwan, and its economic wars against many other countries. — location: 385 ^ref-4461

The fact that, in practice, other countries’ populations are being forced to finance aggressive U.S. militarism is bound to generate opposition to such policies and their outcomes. — location: 401 ^ref-4779

These two mutually reinforcing forces—China’s own development and the fact that U.S. policy is against the interests of the overwhelming majority of the world’s population—constitute the main obstacles to U.S. aggression. — location: 403 ^ref-57860

While those of us outside of the country cannot fully grasp the complexities facing China’s leaders, we can say that they shoulder a great responsibility not only to push the world toward peace and a sustainable planet, but also to make good on the promises of their revolution and to justify the great sacrifices of peasants and workers—the very sacrifices that made China’s current standing in the world possible. — location: 406 ^ref-35188

Defeating U.S. aggression depends in large part on the overall domestic development of China in the economic, military, and all other fields, which is also in the interests of other countries suffering from U.S. aggression. — location: 427 ^ref-23284

The degree to which U.S. military-based aggression, both direct and indirect, will intensify depends on how much the United States is defeated in individual struggles. The more it is successful, the more aggressive it will become; the more it is weakened, the more conciliatory it will become. — location: 430 ^ref-13933

Xi Jinping, shortly after becoming China’s top leader, told then U.S. President Obama that “the broad Pacific Ocean is vast enough to embrace both China and the United States.”45 Rejecting this diplomatic olive branch, then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boasted in a private speech that the United States could call the Pacific “the American Sea” and threatened to “ring China with missile defense.” — location: 823 ^ref-46594

The United States will not just collapse economically, however; Washington’s drive for war, sanctions, and economic decoupling will continue to damage its own economy and jeopardize the world food supply chain. The resulting global social instability will, in turn, further weaken the U.S. economy and generate even more challenges to its rule, including growing opposition to the hegemony of the dollar. — location: 864 ^ref-42293

It is in the interests of the Global South that China remain a strong socialist, sovereign state and that it continue to promote alternative policies for global governance such as the concept of “building a community with a shared future for humanity” — location: 871 ^ref-53225

The causal agent in the two global existential crises now threatening the human species is the same: capitalism and its irrational quest for exponentially increasing capital accumulation and imperial power in a limited global environment. — location: 1257 ^ref-25529

The only possible response to this unlimited threat is a universal revolutionary movement rooted in both ecology and peace that turns away from the current systematic destruction of the Earth and its inhabitants and toward a world of substantive equality and ecological sustainability: namely, socialism. — location: 1259 ^ref-56895