The big con of the neocons is the false and rabidly pro Military-Industrial-Complex (MIC) idea that if (which is actually WHEN; and so even this “if” is itself false and is part of their con) America ceases to be the most powerful nation, then it will cease to exist, at all. (And, yet another — and related — false assumption by them, is that America didn’t exist for over a century before this nation became, in 1945, the world’s most powerful. It obviously did exist before 1945.) That’s how stupid neoconservatism is — loaded with ridiculous falsehoods; but lots of people go for it, nonetheless: They actually believe that the ONLY way that America can be safe or can exist, at all, is if it remains permanently as the world’s most powerful country — which it has been ONLY since 1945 (as-if the pre-1945 America WASN’T America).
On June 7th, the Epoch Times headlined “AI Will Determine Outcome of US-China Cold War, Waltz Says” and reported:
Ongoing competition between China and the United States for next-generation technologies will define the future of artificial intelligence (AI), according to one U.S. congressman.
AI, in turn, will determine the outcome of the New Cold War between the two powers, said Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.).
The only way to ensure U.S. victory in the AI race, and thus the New Cold War, he believes, is to sever ties between the two nations’ tech sectors.
“I just don’t see a path forward without decoupling,” Waltz said during a June 5 talk with the Atlantic Council, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
“We’re in a global arms race with an adversary that, unlike any in American history, has the economic and military capability to truly supplant and replace us, which, again, is their stated goal.”
Accelerating AI Development Is Key
Waltz said that U.S. dependencies on China for manufacturing and critical supply chains were “fantastically dangerous.” Given the growing divide between authoritarian and democratic technospheres, he said, the United States would need to combine effective decoupling with industry-supportive policies. It would also need a more aggressive entrepreneurial ecosystem to out-innovate the communist regime.
He was saying that for China to exceed America in the development of artificial intelligence would be for China “to truly supplant and replace us,” and this means either that America will no longer exist at all, or else that China will rule in America; and he was saying that this, “again, is their stated goal” — though it is not, and never has been. China’s stated goal is not to become the global hegemon (the all-encompassing global empire, which is the U.S. Government’s stated goal), but instead to end hegemony and all forms of international empires, so that ALL nations will be sovereign within their territory, which means that there will be no more colonial nations, no more vassal nations, and no more imperial nations. THAT is, and has been, the Chinese Government’s stated-and-adhered-to goal: to END IMPERIALISM. That’s the biggest difference between their Government, and ours.
Every piece of neocon literature is like that: equating America’s supremacy with America’s very existence. It’s a lie.
NATO and its supporters and member-nations are hiding the fact that the predominant belief in many of these nations is actually that they’re dictatorships that merely pontificate ‘democracy’ to other nations as an excuse to defeat their targeted-for-conquest nations which they call ‘autocracies’ or etc. in order to fool the public to ‘justify’ the military-industrial complex and its war-games and invasions and their enormous arms-sales.
NATO, which is America’s propagandistically ‘pro-democracy’ military alliance against Russia and against China, polled the people in 53 countries — some of which are in NATO and some of which aren’t — and asked them whether they believe “My country is democratic,” and found that NATO’s own core country, U.S., was itself, #35 down from the top, and China was #6, and Russia (NATO’s main target or ‘enemy’ nation) was #43, and that two of the most anti-Russian countries on the list were near the very bottom: the rabidly anti-Russian NATO member Poland was #50, and the NATO-aspiring Ukraine was allegedly #17 (enormously improved performance for NATO, since Ukraine had been #47 out of the 53 nations back in NATO’s 2020 poll).
China was #6, and America was #35 — well into the second half of the list.
Moreover, just a few months earlier, on 24 March 2023, I had headlined “How Nations’ Citizens Rate Their Own Government”, and reported that the international 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, which scientifically sampled 36,000+ people in 27 countries, and 1,150+ people in each, had found that the Chinese ranked the highest of the 27 in “Trust in Government,” and in “Trust in Media,” and in “Trust in Business,” and in “Trust in National Health Authorities,” and in “Trust in the U.N.,” and ranked #2 in “Trust in NGOs.” (India ranked #1 on that.) The U.S. ranked in the bottom third on every one of Edelman’s trust rankings.
Americans are taught that there is only one way to be a democracy, and that America is it. Neither is true. NeoCons not only believe, but they proselytize, both falsehoods. And they also believe that America can’t exist if it’s not the world’s most powerful nation. It’s this lie that defines neoconservatism.
By Eric Zuesse