Ideological dysfunction is coming to the United States

The consequences of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan will continue to flow in circles for a long time, affecting various aspects of the future of the world community. On August 26, an article titled "Why the end of America’s empire won’t be peaceful” was published in the Economist magazine. In this article, Neil Ferguson draws direct parallels between the history of the fall of the British Empire and today's United States.

He pays special attention to the change of value priorities in society, which predetermined the collapse of the British Empire. This is what will be discussed in this article, but in the context of the United States, and how it will affect the rest of the world and Russia in particular.

The Economist article draws really very clear parallels between the British Empire of the early 20th century and the United States of the early 21st century. The war of 1914, the financial crisis, the fall of the economy and the "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1918-1919, brought Britain to "imperial overstrain". Although the pound sterling remained the dominant world currency, it had competitors. Due to the large stratification in society, the left-wing politicians of Great Britain demanded the redistribution of income among the population, and some openly sympathised with socialism.

Another coincidence is Afghanistan. 11 years after the third Anglo-Afghan war, in 1930, The Economist magazine wrote: "due to premature reforms, an uprising broke out in the country, Afghanistan no longer accepts anything Western." Britain has finally lost control of Afghanistan.

Neil Ferguson notes that the most important reason for Britain's weakness was the revolt of the intelligentsia against the empire and traditional British values in principle. He says that today's left and right in the United States either ridicule or condemn the idea of an imperial project. "In short, like the British of the 1930s, the Americans of the 2020s fell out of love with the empire," the author writes.

These arguments could be attributed to the conjuncture of the political confrontation between Britain and the United States, which is clearly developing in the British media. However, the New York Times writes in approximately the same spirit in the article "The American Identity Crisis":

"Many leftists now reject the idea that America can be or is a global defender of democracy, and they consider phrases such as ‘an irreplaceable nation’ or ‘the last hope of the earth’ ridiculous. And on the right, the party leadership, which supports the construction of walls, has abandoned the idea that the rest of the world is worth engaging with at all."

After the American media proclaimed Joe Biden President of the United States in 2020, he announced: "My team reflects the fact that America has returned, it will once again lead the world, and not leave it, it will sit at the head of the table again, it will be ready to confront our opponents and not reject our allies."

On March 25, 2021, Joe Biden said that the 21st century will be decisive in the battle of autocracies and democracies, and on May 31, he said that the protection of human rights is the essence of the American nation.

On August 13th, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British Parliament, Tom Tugendhat, said: "The sudden withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan after 20 years of effort and so much investment will make allies and potential allies around the world think about whether they should make a choice between democracies and autocracies, and understand that some democracies no longer have sufficient strength."

In Bloomberg, we can now read the following message: "The withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, combined with the ambiguous, at best, results of Biden's promises to make human rights the central plan of his foreign policy, casts a shadow on the administration's efforts to change the paradigm of US foreign policy and will probably affect its plan to convene a ‘democracy summit’ in December” (2021).

Many, of course, paid attention to Joe Biden's statement in early September that the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan concerns not only Afghanistan:

"It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries... As we turn the page on the foreign policy that has guided our nat- — our nation the last two decades, we’ve got to learn from our mistakes.

First, we must set missions with clear, achievable goals — not ones we’ll never reach.  And second, we must stay clearly focused on the fundamental national security interest of the United States of America."

Such a change in the foreign policy concept has caused concern in Israel.

"Suddenly, in one fell swoop, Biden declares that the occupation can only have specific security-related goals, and when they are achieved, it must stop... Thus, he pulled out the basis of the excuses that Israel has created over the years for continuing the occupation... Today, Biden is talking about the Afghans. Tomorrow he will say the same thing about the Palestinians,” said Israeli journalist and analyst Zvi Barel.

What happened in Afghanistan has far-reaching consequences. The Atlantic Council proposes to completely rethink the role and strategy of the United States in the Middle East, since against the background of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, America is already perceived in the region as a departing power.

That's the point – the United States needs to rethink what it can offer the world. The elites who have come to power in the United States today reject the fundamental values of the American nation laid down by the founding fathers.

This thesis was described in detail in May 2021 in the material of RUSSTRAT "The Deep state has begun dismantling the American civilisational code". WASP -White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, laid a Messianic goal when creating the United States, and the Trotskyists who have now come to power do not have the same imperial spirit, thanks to which the United States became a world hegemon, albeit for a short time.

By shifting the focus of foreign policy from the idea of common human rights to the issue of racial inequality and support for disadvantaged communities, including LGBT people, the current US elites are only reducing the circle of their potential allies.

This is not just about the Islamic countries of the Middle East, where it is impossible to promote such values in principle. Even in Europe, this policy is being resisted by countries such as Hungary and Poland, which leads to problems in the European Union. Everyone saw how the LGBT issue in Georgia, loyal to the United States, led to mass riots and even victims.

In the United States itself, a value reorientation is unacceptable for about half of the population, the one that voted for Donald Trump. That is why the United States is experiencing ideological dysfunction.

The calculation of the political elites that they will be able to pour money into the emerging problems has not been justified. The White House has to double its inflation forecasts for the fourth quarter of 2021, writes the Wall Street Journal. In the same publication, one can find an article entitled: "Why You Can’t Find Everything You Want at Grocery Stores”.

According to information from store managers, due to a shortage of labour and disruption of supply chains, the problems are now worse than during the shortage in the spring of 2020, caused by the preparation of the population for lockdown.

Moody's Analytics believes that the US economy may forever remain below the pre-covid level. The vacancy report for August showed an increase of 235,000, instead of the expected 720,000, and autumn is ahead and, possibly, a new wave of the pandemic.

The administration of President Biden stated that it would quickly cope with the COVID-19 epidemic, guided by the advice of experts, unlike the "unscientific proposals" of former US President Donald Trump, but this did not happen. Now, The New York Times has published a stunning report claiming that the heads of medical agencies advised the White House to scale back its plan for "booster shots" of vaccines, as the consequences were poorly studied.

In addition, Joe Biden himself creates all new negative information. The news that Joe Biden fell asleep at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett could have been taken as a joke if the pro-government media did not begin to refute what happened in full seriousness.

At the ceremony of handing over the bodies of the soldiers who died on August 26 at the Kabul airport, Joe Biden, showing impatience, repeatedly looked at his watch, relatives of the victims said. USA Today even came out with a refutation of these words, but then took back its words, as the inappropriate behaviour of the president was confirmed.

Against the background of all this, the approval rating of Joe Biden among Americans has collapsed to 43% (below 50% even for the most loyal rating agencies), according to polls at the end of August. The principle of the situation is that the strongest drop in approval occurred among "independent" voters, only 36% of them approve of the president's work, a drop of 10 points in a month. For understanding, approval among Democrats fell from 90% to 85%, and among Republicans from 6% to 5%.

In such conditions, the White House cannot effectively promote its ideological agenda, and the congressional elections of 2022 are ahead, the electoral race has almost begun. If the current trend of public opinion continues, when one in five regrets voting for Biden, then the Republicans will gain the upper hand in both chambers of Congress and it will be possible to put an end to all the plans of the Democrats, including a Democratic president in 2024.

At the moment, Joe Biden has fulfilled only 12% of the initially stated promises, and against the background of the failure in Afghanistan, it is difficult for him to count on the further support of his ideas by members of the Republican Party in the Senate, who helped him with the promotion of the $1 trillion infrastructure plan.

This means that now the Democrats will have to fight desperately for the votes of "independent" voters and, except for changing the ideological vector of their policy, they have practically no levers of influence left. If the leadership of the US Democratic Party has at least a little sanity, they will slowly bring Kamala Harris to the fore with conciliatory rhetoric for a divided American society, and Joe Biden will absorb the negative until the moment is suitable for voluntary resignation.

Thus, the formation of a new ideological agenda that the United States can offer to the world will depend on the internal transformation of the United States. It is difficult to say exactly how it will look, and in what time frame it will finally take shape.

However, it can be assumed that in the "ideological vacuum" of US foreign policy, narratives previously familiar to American society will emerge. It is not for nothing that in his recent speeches Joe Biden shifted the focus from Afghanistan to the "threats" from Russia and China.

In the magazine Politico, which is the mouthpiece of the US Democratic Party, there was a note by David Kramer, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights under President George W. Bush, entitled "What I Wish the U.S. Had Done About Putin Years Ago — And What Biden Should Do Now”.

This opus contains all the horror stories about Russian President Vladimir Putin and aggressive Russia, and it ends with the words: "Biden bragged in Geneva about America’s ability to respond to cyberattacks. Perhaps Putin needs to experience a power outage in the area outside of Moscow where he resides or at his $1.3 billion palace on the Black Sea. We don’t want confrontation with Russia, but at some point, failure to push back on Putin’s abuses may be inviting precisely that”.

As an illustration for this article, there is a photo of the Geneva meeting between Biden and Putin. After it, many put forward versions that the parties agreed on the division of spheres of influence so that Russia would not interfere with the United States in the fight against China. However, after reading the opinion of Western experts, it becomes clear that, in their opinion, it was not about the division of influence, but about the possibility of "driving the bear into its cage" so that it would maintain "strategic stability" and doesn’t unexpectedly prevent the United States from pursuing its policy.

Unfortunately, apparently due to translation inaccuracies, the domestic media replicated the headline "Biden said that the era of attempts to rebuild other countries is over", although in reality, as one can see above, in his speech about leaving Afghanistan, Biden meant only military operations. Therefore, the United States will definitely continue to support the anti-Russian regime in Ukraine and will not give up trying to demolish the Lukashenko regime by promoting Tikhanovskaya. In the short term, the ideological crisis in the United States will definitely not bring relief to Russia.