Sanctity Lost: Even Neocon Pantheon Declares US a 'Rogue Superpower'
The era of American exceptionalism in the eyes of its most fanatic imperialists has drawn to an end.
Two weeks ago we had seen arch-neocon Robert Kagan making surprising comments to fellow neocon grandee Bill Kristol about Israel essentially being a burden to the US. This came as a shocking canary-in-coalmine moment signaling a kind of revolt amongst the deep state against the excesses of the current administration.
Now Kagan himself has penned an oped in The Atlantic outright calling the US a rogue state:
We know when such figures come out in this way, it represents true alarm behind the scenes rather than any kind of genuine benevolent empathy for the rest of the world. No, these people are alarmed that their empire has overstepped its boundaries, bit off more than it can chew, and is in a precipitous downfall.
Being that these figures have built their entire lives, careers, and oeuvres on hypocrisy, greed, contradiction, and other modalities of sin and deceit, it is not surprising that in the very opening paragraph of Kagan’s polemic, we’re immediately met with a rich hypocrisy:
Whenever and however America’s war with Iran ends, it has both exposed and exacerbated the dangers of our new, fractured, multipolar reality—driving deeper wedges between the United States and former friends and allies; strengthening the hands of the expansionist great powers, Russia and China; accelerating global political and economic chaos; and leaving the United States weaker and more isolated than at any time since the 1930s. Even success against Iran will be hollow if it hastens the collapse of the alliance system that for eight decades has been the true source of America’s power, influence, and security.
In Kagan’s twisted neocon worldview, it is China and Russia that are the “expansionist” powers when China has not done a single thing to any country—all of its ‘imagined’ schemes against Taiwan lie in the propaganda mills of the US military-industrial-complex. The US is currently occupying dozens of nations, has invaded several in the past year alone, is openly threatening to collapse or invade others like Cuba—but it is China that is ‘expansionist’. In Russia’s case, it is expansionist NATO that—urged on by the US itself—has been gobbling up the entire post-Soviet sphere to plop itself threateningly on Russia’s border, which caused Russia to finally react in Ukraine.
Though Kagan calls the US a ‘rogue superpower’, he does not actually liken its faults to those of Russia’s or China’s, which in his mind are far more pernicious. In reality, throughout the piece you realize he’s framing the term ‘rogue’ not to mean something particularly bad or unjust, but simply a state acting against the interests of the global deep state as represented by NATO and other US “allies”. In short, Kagan is arguing for the continuation of the Western Hegemonic Order and his critiques of the US amount to surface-level disagreements with Trump’s foreign policy, rather than the true deprecations aimed at the ‘bad guy’ states of Russia and China.
At least beneath the obligatory bias, Kagan remains lucid on the purely mechanical breakdown of the conflict thus far:
Some analysts have suggested that Russia and China have failed to come to Iran’s defense, and that this somehow constitutes a defeat for them, because Iran was their ally. But the Russians are helping Iran by providing satellite imagery and advanced drone capabilities to strike more effectively at U.S. military and support installations. And China has not suffered a loss in Iran insofar as Iran has granted safe passage to its oil shipments.
But he again quickly demonstrates the blatant hypocrisy his ilk have hung their hats on for generations:
More important, in Russia and China’s hierarchy of interests, defending Iran is of distinctly secondary importance; their primary goal is to expand their regional hegemony. For Putin, Ukraine is the big prize that will immeasurably strengthen Russia’s position vis-à-vis the rest of Europe. For China, the primary goal is to push the United States out of the Western Pacific, and anything that degrades America’s ability to project force in the region is a benefit. Indeed, the longer American attention and resources are tied up in the Middle East, the better for both Russia and China. Neither Moscow nor Beijing can be unhappy to see the war drive deep and perhaps permanent wedges between the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia.
The real showstopper, however, comes in the next few paragraphs, wherein Kagan effectively reveals the true secret reason behind the US’s perennial aggression against Iran, and again implies—as he did last time—that Israel is at the center of it:
The United States has long sought to prevent Iraq or Iran from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, but not because these countries would pose a direct threat to the United States. The American nuclear arsenal would have been more than adequate to deter a first strike by either of them, as it has been for decades against far more powerful adversaries. What American administrations have feared is that an Iran in possession of nuclear weapons would be more difficult to contain in its region, because neither the United States nor Israel would be able to launch the kind of attack now under way. The Middle East’s security, not America’s, would be imperiled.
Read that last part again because his point is not immediately clear without clarification: The only reason the US has terrorized Iran in the hopes of stopping it from developing nuclear weapons is not because those weapons would pose a threat to the US itself, but because a nuclear Iran would have credible deterrence in stopping the US and Israel from engaging in unprovoked aggression against Iran, the likes of which they are presently carrying out.
Can you say ‘Wow’?
Let’s read that again to make sure we’re not going crazy.
“What American administrations have feared is that an Iran in possession of nuclear weapons would be more difficult to contain in its region, because neither the United States nor Israel would be able to launch the kind of attack now under way. The Middle East’s security, not America’s, would be imperiled.”
But it gets worse.
