High-ranking psychopaths are pushing for a nuclear war with Russia, seemingly intentionally

If the US leaders wanted to wage a thermonuclear war that would destroy America and the world, we would not be here to talk about it. President Biden has explicitly ruled out a direct confrontation with Russia, no matter what happens in Ukraine.

However, there are disturbing indications that some individuals in high places in the US (or representing the thinking of many in such high places) are okay with a nuclear war that will destroy the United States, or in fact are encouraging such a war.

A "no fly zone" of death would expand across the globe instantly

Imposing a no-fly zone in Ukraine will trigger a third world war because it will require targeting Russian airfields, radar and defense systems on Russian territory with American missiles. Russian defenses have vast ranges that prohibit the use of US aircraft over Ukraine. Russian weapons can also easily reach all American airfields in Europe that would be involved in any such operation. The vastness of the Russian military means that the US would have to launch a devastating attack on Russia to neutralise all the threats to US planes as they attack the Russians. Russia would invariably respond by attacking US airfields in turn, and very quickly targeting the US mainland and cities in response to its own territory being attacked by America.

Despite this, there are calls from seemingly well-qualified individuals to go ahead and start this suicidal conflict anyway.

Here are just three examples. There are no doubt others, possibly more influential, but these are just picked at random for being prominent examples of Anglo-American leadership on both sides of the Atlantic.

General Philip Breedlove

This man is no crank. Breedlove is a US general and the former supreme military commander of NATO (Supreme Allied Commander Europe, or SACEUR). He has explictly pleaded, "How many casualties does it take before we take a different approach to this war?" While this may simply seem like a stupid remark, based on emotion, this man is trained and competent enough to be fully aware that what he is advocating will entail killing not just everyone in Ukraine but everyone in Russia, Europe and North America too. Why, then, is he advocating it?

Lindsey Graham

Lindsey Graham, an influential and powerful US senator, has stated that the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine (which he will only blame on Russia) will make the moral case to forget about the risk of nuclear war and begin attacking the Russians. He is also too well-informed in briefings to be unaware that his suggestion to start a world war against Russia would kill far more people than a chemical attack and would quickly kill everyone in the United States and Russia under the fire of hydrogen bombs.

Jonathan Powell

The former Downing Street Chief of Staff under Tony Blair from 1997-2007 has advocated against "appeasement" and argued for launching a war on the Russians if they use a chemical weapon in Ukraine. He cites the example of Syria and the need to take a firmer moral stand (apparently that will do a whole lot of good when we are all skeletons). He is advocating this despite the fact that Western governments were never even fully confident that Syria used chemical weapons, and they bombed Syria merely because of intelligence assessments stating it was "likely". Apparently, we will be very impatient to immolate ourselves and not bother to wait for any investigation in Ukraine, too.

As horrifying as the pictures may have been, the use of chemical weapons in Syria barely killed anyone and had little to no effect on the battlefield other than prompting Western strikes. More people died from knives in Syria. The nuclear exchange that would be guaranteed by attacking Russia on such a flimsy, emotionally manipulative pretext about "chemicals" would kill almost everyone in Ukraine, and then kill almost everyone in both the West and Russia. Apparently, politicians don't see a moral issue with the scenario of mass immolation of people, followed by the larger group of us whose skin will melt and their eyeballs will fall out, followed by another percentarge who will be vomiting blood. No, these scenes don't worry them; they are just worried about the "chemicals" and the idea of people choking, such that they think it is worth risking the nuclear scenario.

These interventionist leaders we are talking about may be insane, but the unique mental health problems of those with power are less important to talk about than the need to stop them.

Who will stop these men?

The answer is... currently serving American officers and generals, who want their troops to live, and probably want their families to survive too.

It should be observed that military experts and officials tend to always warn against what will cause a nuclear war, as happened in Syria. Here we are again, and the same kind of "hawks" are trying to impose a situation where deescalation could become too difficult for the military personnel tasked with a nation's safety, as if the politicians had reached out and ripped the brakes from your car to make sure you crash.

Getting closer and closer to Russia and trying to enforce the US's will closer and closer to them potentially creates an ever more uncontrollable and unpredictable series of conflicts between the US and Russia that make it almost impossible for troops to avoid a nuclear war, even if they have the maximum will to avoid one.

Being responsible for a larger population, if the US gets into a nuclear war with Russia, it will suddenly make the world record for being the country with the biggest piles of dead bodies in human history. Every American officer and general's family will most likely perish, meaning that they have utterly failed not only in their duty as a soldier but even as a human being.

The only solution can be that American officers must continuously resist the pressure of politicians to put them in a situation of nuclear escalation that they cannot escape. Finally, if American officers are unable to prevent themselves being put in that situation, it would become their duty to preserve their country by, in the worst case scenario, mutiny. One should be prepared, privately, to kill their own political leaders and seize control of the government, even at grave risk to their own lives, if the alternative is to obey orders that will directly lead to nuclear war.

- ClubOfInfo

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International law could allow Russia to strike NATO, ban NATO response

While Russian diplomats have not yet stated the following, preferring to make polite requests of US and NATO forces in Europe, they may have the international legal high ground to attack if NATO attempts to build up sufficient forces on the Russian border to prevail.

The United Nations Charter, conceived to prevent aggression like the Axis attack on the Soviet Union, does not permit developing aggressive military alliances to defeat a nation and moving armies towards it as NATO is doing. In fact, international law would seem to support pre-emptively destroying these forces before they are ready to attack.

Article VII of the UN Charter reads, "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations". All that is required is that it be "immediately reported to the Security Council". It covers preventive action, when you believe an object is being placed to imminently attack your country and its indepdendence.

To quote the interpretation of international law experts in the UK:

Article 51 of the UN Charter does not require a state passively to await an attack, but includes the ‘inherent right’ – as it’s described in Article 51 – to use force in self-defence against an ‘imminent’ armed attack, referring back to customary international law

As the British view states, one does not need to stand idle and wait to be attacked by an adversary, while one believes the adversary is assembling a military coalition or military infrastructure for aggression.

Russia outnumbered

Being the lesser military force in terms of pieces of equipment and numbers of troops, as was also the case during the German invasion in 1941 and prior, during Napoleon's 1812 invasion, Russia is under no obligation to wait passively as a massive 30-nation alliance rallies armies in front of its territory to threaten it with overwhelming force. If NATO attempts to accumulate forces near Russia capable of inflicting a decisive defeat on it, this will give legal justification for Russian leaders to attack and cripple Alliance objects that pose imminent threats near their territory. This will of course not include targeting the home territories of the US, UK and France, which are part of a quite different calculation concerning mutual destruction.

We have to remember that the UN Charter was written after the Second World War, and the Soviet Union played a major role in its adoption. It barred wars of aggression against the existence of a state.

For NATO to bring missiles and a coalition of armies from thousands of miles away to menace Russia cannot be perceived as anything other than preparation for aggression. This will fall entirely on the wrong side of international law, and justify every form of warfare by Russia to remove the imminent and encroaching threat. NATO forces will have no legal right to respond to being eliminated along the Russian border, since the Russian attack will be limited only to imminent threats it notified the UN about.

NATO could crumble under a justified Russian attack

Russian forces could solely use their conventional missiles, and not exit the Russian borders, tightly adhering to international law so that their actions cannot be interpreted as anything other than an appropriate and surgically precise response to imminent aggression.

Rather than going nuclear, NATO would most likely capitulate to Russian demands in such a conflict situation (with the exception of announcing some sanctions and doing additional media manipulation to convince people to think Russia may have been the aggressor). NATO military forces, like Russian troops, may be willing to obey orders and fight to the bitter end in a nuclear war, but the reality is that NATO is led not by these men but by civilian pencilnecks whose main message in all their actions is that they really don't want to get hurt. In fact, that's why NATO expanded. The core member states of NATO don't even want to fight, never mind get hurt in a conflict, hence the desire for buffer states.

Preferring complete immunity and having no chance of dying has been the core motive of all NATO's policies, including those responsible for the current crisis. As soon as the promise of  growing security was replaced with real violence and the spectre of a chaotic death, NATO leaders would no longer care about defeating Russia and would only think about saving their own skins.

- ClubOfInfo

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US intentionally breaking Europe: Kristian NF Interview

 

Europe is split along more lines than just a conflict with Russia. As Eastern European countries are protective of their national sovereignty and hold conservative views of culture, they are on a collision course with the economic powerhouses of the liberal West.

"While liberal ideologues dream of the United States of Europe, a different trend is emerging in Eastern Europe", emailed Kristian NF, a German dissident blogger also using the name Mars von Padua, in response to a question on whether divisions are forming between eastern and western member states.

Despite the division with the overbearing Brussels, countries like Poland are unlikely to find themselves back in any kind of favorable relationship with Russia. It is more likely that these nationalistic states will be stuck between Russia and the EU and supported by the Americans against both. They will fight a two-front Cold War in which they denounce liberal adversaries to the west and the speculative Russian military threat to the east.

In Kristian's words:

...one must not forget the transatlantic influence of NATO on the question of the EU. The USA in particular has a special interest in preventing Germany and Russia from getting closer. An alliance between Moscow, Berlin or even Paris would be a nightmare. That is why the Intermarium project was refocused, a geopolitical draft that was developed after the Second World War. An alliance of the Eastern European countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea under Polish leadership. The Polish Marshal Josef Pilsudski called this project Międzymorze. And this project has been under discussion again since 2016, with the Viségrad states being the first cornerstones. The USA is promoting this project, in which Hungary, Croatia and Romania, both NATO countries, are also involved. Just like the Baltic states. If this project is realized, there will be no rapprochement with Russia, but only a strong division with Western Europe. 

Poland's tensions with the EU elites, based on Kristian's assessment, arise from its aggressive foreign policy goals to establish itself as a great power. The US encourages these goals, despite the risk of Poland clashing with all its neighbors in Warsaw's attempts to establish itself as master of Eastern Europe.

These comments were received as part of an email-based Q and A series that replaced what would normally be an annual discussion among Mont Order members. The full series is available as a printout at Academia.edu, titled Mont Order November 2021 Conference Text.

- ClubOfInfo

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Trump foreign policy continues: Hugo Turner

US aggressive foreign policy has not abated, only realigning itself increasingly against China, argues Hugo Turner, author of the Anti-Imperialist U blog.

What we see is a consistent pattern that, even if associated by many with Donald Trump, already existed and continues in the present day. Turner sums this up:

there is a realignment of priorities going on behind the scenes China is increasingly becoming the main imperial target. The Cold war with Russia continues. The war on left wing governments in latin America has continued fairly consistently from Bush II to Obama to Trump to Biden. Currently the US seems focused on meddling in Africa fermenting coups and civil wars. 

There is a "consistent imperial strategy that continues regardless of who is President although some presidents may aggressively escalate attacks on certain countries".

This evident reality makes a mockery of the views of those who saw Donald Trump as everything wrong with America. Much of what he represents pre-dated him and is now embodied by current president, Joe Biden.

Another topic addressed was the softer treatment Biden received by US news media. It may be that this is the only reason why so many impressionable American liberals believed Trump was really so exceptionally bad, despite policy being almost exactly the same as the new administration they adore.

The blogger gave these comments as part of a short email-based Q and A. The email-based Q and A forms part of a series replacing what would normally be an audio discussion of the online Mont Order group for the year 2021. The full series is available in a printout at Academia.edu, titled Mont Order November 2021 Conference Text.

- ClubOfInfo

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2020 protests: American Spring? US regime-collapse?

The Trump regime is presiding over a viral outbreak that slaughtered over 100,000 Americans, embarassing the US as the worst-hit country in the world. It is likely to kill even more, and meanwhile the failing regime carries out abductions and killings of its own.

Here are some points to be aware of:

* People from neglected and brutalized African American communities are reported to overwhelmingly be the victims of both the COVID-19 outbreak and also police violence. The infamous killing of George Floyd was only the most public example of the latter, but the rage it unleashed was aimed at avenging all similar such murders. Neglect, as well as living in what is effectively a failed state under a racist military occupation modeled on the armor-plated brutality of Israel, put these communities in desperation and led to inevitable resistance.

* High-level US government insiders from the regime's Republican and Democratic wings (e.g. Susan Rice) are hostile to the protesters, exposing the sham two-party system.

* US media are hostile to the protesters, exposing servile pro-regime media outlets such as CNN.

* Celebrities keep indicating support to protesters but condemn the actions of protesters and offer no substantive criticism of the regime, showing they are stooges who defend the status quo.

* Social media platforms appear to be allowing encouragement of the protests, although this is based on their own sensitivity to their users' wishes and is likely to terminate if the regime comes into danger and decides to put pressure on social media.

* Trump is pursuing labelling the protesters as "terrorists".

* Trump hid in a bunker during protests.

* Trump is considering military action - at the level of the Federal government itself - against the protesters. This could effectively mean a regime crackdown against citizens all across the US.

* Police have stuggled to respond to the protesters, with protesters regularly gaining the upper hand and managing to force even armed security personnel out of buildings and public spaces. Given that the US police are highly militarized, this result is astonishing.

* The ongoing COVID-19 lockdown probably hampers the regime's ability to coordinate a response to its deteriorating situation. Parts of the US government will struggle to meet and coordinate responses as many officials are likely to be self-isolating or unable to attend physical gatherings, whereas protesters are free to take whatever action they wish.

In terms of how technology impacts the future trajectory of this situation (the main topic of this blog), we are in a unique situation. Although the internet was used to disseminate the footage of George Floyd's murder, we are no longer seeing dissidents forced to interact online while the regime takes action in the real world. Instead, members of the regime have to stay at home in front of a screen while protesters and dissidents are the ones who can take action in the real world.

Where this will go is hard to predict. It may continue to escalate to the point that there is a deployment of military force by the US government against protesters - something already being considered by Trump according to some reports. This would be hugely embarassing to the US, a severe stain on its human rights record for decades to come, and potentially seen as a humiliation of America in the ongoing cold conflict with China and Russia. Blaming Russia or China for it will only make this situation even more embarassing to the US, since this only turns the tables on a country constantly funding and leading protests in other countries.

On the other hand, the US government may manage to drain the energy of the protesters through mass arrests and downplay the impact of the protests through its servile mainstream media. Owing to the lack of organizing power of the protesters and the fact this is not a planned but spontanous uprising, such a result seems like the most probable conclusion. If on the other hand the protesters begin attacking sensitive sites in Washington DC like monuments and the White House itself, or if protesters begin storming prisons and the armories of the already overpowered police forces, this story could enter a new chapter - for better or worse.

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Wikipedia propaganda and disinformation habits exposed

While still soliciting funds for being a supposed neutral community-based encyclopedia edited by everyone across the world, Wikipedia's politics pages are prone to be stuffed with clownish North America First propaganda.

On the topic of alleged interference by Russian spies in the North American regime's disputed 2016 election, the paranoid claims of the regime and its media are treated as unquestionable and the matter is regarded as closed:

"The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goal of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political discord in the United States."

Read no further, it is a closed matter! According to the logic of its lackeys, the North American regime is the most neutral source - not just for talking about its own internal matters, but also Russia's.

With the regime-loving press being cited to back every point, North American loyalists and apologists have been sneaked into Wikipedia's editing circles and given carte blanche to edit the English language version of the site to only publish their opinions.

Doubt is not tolerated at Wikipedia, where there is an inquisitorial insistence on certainty and the sole kind of opinion it is permissible to have. To establish that absolute certainty, only the sources approved by the North American regime are deemed reliable in every case. Opinions from Neocons and bellicose propagandists rambling about the regime's democratic purity and the martyrdom of the regime-picked ruler Hillary Clinton are defended as factual statements conforming to impeccable standards of neutrality. All the supposedly neutral sources jokingly trace back to the North American regime's own newspapers and television networks, where the lies are faxed in directly from the regime to be adored by its sycophants and employees.

As for the scandalous possibility of any Russian contributing to a Wikipedia article about his or her own nation on this supposedly neutral international website, that cannot be contemplated by the editors, who refuse even to respond on the matter. No Russian version of the article is allowed, as that would require the cooperation of culprits who have not shown enough adoration of the North American regime like Wikipedia's editors.

Without receiving any direct answer from the editors, one user put the question to the article's authors in its talk section:

"The article presents assessments by various US bodies as factual because they said so, and no comparable effort is made to show responses and perspectives from Russia. The complete lack of a Russian language version is curious. Is there an active effort here to prevent any Russian-speakers or Russian IP addresses from being involved at the page, and why?"

A quick scan through the extensive talk archives at the contested Wikipedia page shows many North Americans have taken issue with the way the article presents its dodgy claims and tries to encourage adoration of the regime.

A common tactic in North American propaganda is to load any lead section of text or television broadcasting with the most overbearing and least credible claims of the regime, using fact-file-like media to portray these as verified facts told with great integrity.

The intention is to abruptly stop readers from reading further, encouraging sleepy acceptance of regime statements. As far as the Wikipedia editors are concerned, only the first sentence of their article should be read as it contains sufficient propaganda from the regime and closes the case, encouraging loyalty and discouraging questions.

This tactic occurs over and over again in North American propaganda on many websites, and now affects the supposedly neutral Wikipedia too. Wikipedia is especially useful to the regime because it allows its lackeys to obfuscate their circular reasoning, clouding criticism and wasting the time of potential critics wishing to look further. Such dissidents will be directed on a long chase through supposedly "neutral" sources that ultimately trace back to nowhere except the regime and its choir.

For the North Americans to have loaded their supposedly "neutral" Wikipedia with state propaganda and shallow nationalism is a loss to the internet and shows us something about the regime's ideology. Whatever it is really fighting for, it is not accuracy or accountability. This regime and its lackeys are guilty of treating everything - including encyclopedias and perhaps even maps and dictionaries - as Cold War geography. For them, all things can be used as cover and every critic is a Russian assassin. Things like neutrality and trust, as far as the North American regime is concerned, are worth destroying to win their war.

What the regime may not have considered is that its erosion of journalistic integrity and neutrality only fuels the ridicule and criticism of its policies. So far, no evidence shows the regime achieved any success in reversing the North American people's criticism of its violence, repression and bellicosity.

Wikipedia is already not taken seriously in any proper political discussion, although its Cold War hijacking may help the regime misinform less politically-aware members of the public. In discussions on propaganda, critics should be quick to point to Wikipedia's already discredited status on political matters and poor record in challenging lies. It is just a rag.

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"New World Order" is a fail at IR

The Blog

Discrediting all use of the terms "New World Order" and "NWO", a Beliefnet post asserts that most people using the terms are misreading International Relations (IR) terminology.

In the IR discipline which originated the rhetorical term, "new world order" (not capitals and never using the acronym NWO) only refers boringly to the post-Soviet global balance of power, the post explains. It means the same thing as "unipolar order", or the balance of power in which the US is the dominant actor in world affairs.

The blog explains clearly:

"As a student of International Relations (IR) I know what the new world order really is. It was a phrase used by President Bush Senior and some other politicians. More often, it is called the “world order” and just refers to the “balance of power” in the world. It is common International Relations terminology... “Old world order” is when the Soviet Union and the United States competed in the Cold War...

It is arguable that the new world order described in IR is now very old, and does not exist anymore, as the US is no longer the single dominant actor. The fact this new world order is so old and has been a failure does not affect the conspiracy theorists who still think the "NWO" is a new power taking over the world, 26 years on.

The blog goes on to say that the associated Illuminati conspiracy theory is "just nonsense", refusing to go into any more depth on that subject. Believers in the New World Order conspiracy theory think the world's governments and political elites are shape-shifting lizard men (David Icke), Satan worshippers (Alex Jones) or Freemasons and that they drink the blood of children, at the same time plotting to reduce the Earth's population.

These New World Order conspiracy theorists such as Daniel Estulin also believe transhumanists - a small humanitarian movement who try to improve longevity and other social ills using technology - are evil narcissists who plan to kill everyone else and turn themselves into immortal gods.

Enernet would bring "liberation": The BlogWhile continuing to bet on synthetic biology as the eventual solutio... https://t.co/z6g6PbjDpO

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) February 19, 2016

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Russian trolls or truth-tellers?

The Blog

Unable to accept that the Internet has given rise to new, alternative media voices, the mainstream media resorts to new lows in smearing bloggers as "trolls" and proponents of "propaganda". Worst of all is the suggestion that everyone criticizing the media's anti-Russian lies is being paid by the Russians.

The Fox-owned (not Kremlin-owned) blog L'Ordre gave the following condemnation of this new narrative designed to salvage the credibility of mainstream media and government statements in the face of challenges emanating on the blogosphere:

Apparently, the solution to the truth and the bloggers who help to convey it against the tide of lies of the mainstream media is some dirty mound of money, and lots of it. Think of that paradox for a moment. On the side of the “dictator” Putin, there are grassroots bloggers all being rejected as “fake” by Western governments and “respected” journalists. Putin is called “plutocratic” by these liars, who came to office powered by corporate donors and who believe their dirty money is the “democratic” way to resist Putin “propaganda” emanating from (what looks like??) genuine, grassroots bloggers telling the truth about Ukraine. I guess that when you have no popular support on the blogosphere, all you can do is fabricate something or use the bullhorns of corporate media, and that’s where the billions of dollars spent on getting America’s message out to the world is going to go – towards countering the “propaganda” of millions of Internet users who are sick and tired of lies being stuffed down their throats and would prefer to examine the facts according to their own interests. 

Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/lordre/2015/04/russian-propaganda-and-paid-trolls-more-like-the-truth-and-the-blogosphere.html#ixzz3XluZj4N6 

Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/lordre/2015/04/russian-propaganda-and-paid-trolls-more-like-the-truth-and-the-blogosphere.html#FTkpIZTYoQ53OYxP.99

The blog makes the observation that a "new McCarthyism" (a logical consequence of the "new Cold War") is motivating politicians and journalists to condemn any blogger opposing their anti-Russian partisanship as somehow paid or manipulated by Vladimir Putin. McCarthyism was a phenomenon during the original Cold War, in which artists and media figures were accused of being the direct agents of Joseph Stalin or later Soviet leaders due to their criticisms of US policy. McCarthyism is viewed by historians as a form of political persecution and censorship at best, and a witch-hunt at worst.

While claims are being made that Russia is winning an "information war", using propaganda, the reality is simply that the Russians are right and the Americans are wrong.

Not only is the US itself supporting foreign rebel groups as it accuses Russia of doing in Ukraine, but it is still waging a war of aggression against five countries. These are listed at the L'Ordre blog as Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Iran - the latter being subjected to threats of aggression that are prohibited under international law by the same article outlawing unprovoked military attack on other UN member states.

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Global transformation and nostalgia

The Blog

The end of the Cold War didn't bring peace, or the liberal democratic paradise promised by Reagan and Thatcher. Instead it brought ignorance, darkness, and doom. We are living in the "twilight period of democracy itself".

That is the assessment of Tariq Ali, in an op-ed fist published at the London Review of Books and later at Counterpunch. Ali went on to criticize what he termed as "declinism", the idea that America is an empire in terminal decline. This "declinism" has been presented in some depth here in the US coverage at The clubof.info Blog, usually revolving around the theories of hegemony authored by Immanuel Wallerstein about the US rise to nuclear superpower status in Europe in 1945 and its angry decline since those glory days.

Ali sees empires as more "unassailable" than the theorists of US decline will admit, and points out that they are able to take serious setbacks and continue to maintain their disproportionate strength and influence regardless of such developments. Ali argues:

Some of the declinist arguments are simplistic – that, for example, all empires have eventually collapsed. This is of course true, but there are contingent reasons for those collapses, and at the present moment the United States remains unassailable: it exerts its soft power all over the world, including in the heartlands of its economic rivals; its hard power is still dominant, enabling it to occupy countries it sees as its enemies; and its ideological power is still overwhelming in Europe and beyond.

The author, an ardent critic of the 2003 Iraq War, recapped how the US destroyed Iraq, eliminating what was essentially a far more tolerant and progressive society than currently exists in the sectarianism-racked state. He refers to this conduct as the "demodernisation" of Iraq, which aligns with the reality that despite pretending to be committed to the modernity of technology, the US is desperately afraid of any other country harnessing technology and constantly sabotages their efforts. Ali points out that Iran was a necessary ally for the US to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, and that encroaching on Iran and placing sanctions on Iran made little sense in view of the extent to which the US relied on Iranian political support to create any semblance of stability in the region.

On the art of predicting the future, Ali leans more towards the concept of uncertainty and heightened potential for personal agency by individual activists, much as Immanuel Wallerstein seemed to theorize in Utopistics (1998):

Where are we going to end up at the end of this century? Where is China going to be? Is Western democracy going to flourish? One thing that has become clear over the last decades is that nothing happens unless people want it to happen; and if people want it to happen, they start moving. You would have thought that the Europeans would have learned some lessons from the crash that created this recent recession, and would have acted, but they didn’t: they just put sticking plaster on the wounds and hoped that the blood would be stemmed. So where should we look for a solution? One of the more creative thinkers today is the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, who makes it clear that an alternative structure for the European Union is desperately needed and that it will necessitate more democracy at every stage – at a provincial and city level as well as a national and European level. There needs to be a concerted effort to find an alternative to the neoliberal system. We have seen the beginnings of such an attempt in Greece and in Spain, and it could spread.

Ali argues that people in the former East Bloc countries of Europe are nostalgic for the days of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, feeling that the sense of community and the effectiveness of social services were both better in that era.

In sum, Ali's analysis is more pessimistic or uncertain than most, concluding "it's a mixed and confused world". However, it deserves to be considered at least as one that stands in contradiction to the views of Immanuel Wallerstein on the decline of US power and the inevitability of a structural transition to an alternative form of world order.

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