Undeclared, of course, like most US wars
Even before the latest attacks on Iran by Israel and the US, a global struggle of historic proportions has been going on for years. Five centuries of Western global dominance is breaking down, and in desperation the West, led by the US, is resorting to brute force to try to maintain its fading dominance. We’re witnessing the end of Western imperialism, that colonized the rest of the world so that Europe could live off the wealth of other nations.
The self-proclaimed superpower status of the US is sounding hollow, as the US military has gone from defeat to defeat in Viet Nam, Korea, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and now apparently in Iran as well. In an unspoken acknowledgment of this reality, the US is retreating from it’s planned global dominance to a regional last stand in the Americas. Trump’s talking about making Canada the 51st state, taking over Greenland (the territory of a NATO ally), and continuing to treat South America as his back yard. He attacked Venezuela, not only to seize control of their oil, but also trying to show that the US military is still a force to be reckoned with. As he now threatens to invade Cuba, the world can see the reality: The US is just a big schoolyard bully, picking on the smallest other kids to show how tough they are.
Since the end of WW II, when most European colonies became independent, like India for example, the so-called “Third World” has been developing rapidly, and is catching up with their former masters. In the early stages, even though they were independent, many were still being controlled economically by their colonizers. The French, who colonized West Africa, are only now being booted out of the economies of Burkina Faso and other nearby countries. Many other former colonies, who people now refer to collectively as the Global South, are also seeking to break free of Western economic controls, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Swift payment system for international trade. All of these economic systems were all set up at the end of WW II as a way for the West to maintain control over the rest of the world. It included establishing the US dollar as the reserve currency for the entire world, giving the US a great deal of control. That’s why US sanctions are such a powerful (illegal under international law) weapon the US can use to bully other countries. It’s like having control over their bank accounts. But that control too is slipping away, with the advent of the BRICS.
The BRICS group, whose name is an acronym of its founding countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, is a collective effort to create an alternative to the Western dollar-based economic system. That why we hear about “de-dollarization” these days, and hear Trump threatening any country that tries to move away from the dollar with tariffs, or by closing the US market to their products. In a sense, the dollar is another weapon in the US arsenal. There are both military and economic types of warfare, as well as information wars, and political pressure. As Clausewitz famously said many years ago, “War is a continuation of politics by other means.” Today, the reverse is also heard. “Politics is a continuation of war by other means.” Both, sadly, are true. They’re both ways to control others.
Coming back to the undeclared WW III, it’s the struggle of the fading Western world to hold on to it’s control over the rest of the world, in the face of the growth of BRICS. From its initial five members, it has grown to ten, and many other countries are lining up to join. BRICS now includes over half of the world population (India and China?), while the US has only 5%. And with the economic growth of China, the BRICS economic output is now greater than that of the US and its main allies, the G7. The final nail in the West’s economic coffin is that the BRICS are doing business in their own currencies, and abandoning the US dollar.
The most unusual thing about this war is that while the US is waging war on several fronts, in Ukraine and now in Iran (and losing in both places), the BRICS are not attacking the US militarily, but rather politically and economically. Yes, Russia and Iran are fighting militarily against the US, but only in self-defense. The US is attacking both of them because they, along with China, which the US is also preparing to attack, are the most powerful members of BRICS. BRICS is not a military alliance; it’s an economic cooperative, with one one country as the leader. Their annual meetings are held in a different member country every year.
The war in Iran isn’t just about controlling the oil. It’s also an attempt to break up the overland trade routes that the BRICS have been building for years. Two of those trade routes cross in Iran. One, sometimes called the New Silk Road, already has a railroad running from China to Iran, and is intended to go on into Europe. The other, called the Northern Corridor, runs south from Russia, through Iran, down to India. These land-based trade routes, when completed, will be faster than shipping by sea, and not threatened by potential blockages at ocean choke points, such as the Straits of Malacca or Hormuz, or even the Suez Canal. If the US can take control of Iran, either through regime change as hoped, or even the total destruction of the country, as it did with Syria, it will have dealt a serious blow to the BRICS.
Although unlike WW II, where battles raged on many fronts around the world, today the military struggles are limited primarily to Ukraine and Iran. The reason it’s being called WW III is that it’s affecting the entire world, even countries that are not combatants. The economic disruption from the US/Israel war on Iran is threatening to bring on a global economic recession which will devastate the entire world, and it’s being brought on by the military actions of the US government. Though Israel is considered a co-combatant alongside the US, they alone could not have created the nightmare the world is facing today. It is the US support for Israel’s expansionist policies (“Greater Israel”) that has fueled the fire. Though most people talk of Israeli control of the US government, in actuality Israel is a tool of US foreign policy, a European colonial fortress planted in West Asia to threaten and destabilize the local governments, even though many of them are puppets or vassals of the US.
This has been US policy for many years. In areas where the US cannot directly control other nations, they are happy to be able to intervene in ways that create chaos and divisions in the area. That weakens the entire region, which enables the US policy of “Full Spectrum Dominance,” a euphemism for world control. I heard this personally years ago when I was visiting South America. At that time, the US was heavily invested in Colombia, and one of the Colombians I spoke with explained it very simply and clearly, saying “Colombia is the Israel of the Americas.”
To conclude, it’s clear that this new “world war” is being brought on by the ruling elites hiding behind US government, what we call the “deep state.” The American people, as opposed to the US national government, which is controlled by the moneyed class, are opposed to this war. We’re not interested in ruling the rest of the world. To end this war, and all other wars, we, the simple, ordinary, and decent people of the world need to take control of our government back from those in power today. If we can’t, or won’t for any reason, we’re leaving our lives in the hands of the brutal and heartless people that have been bringing us endless wars throughout recorded history. It’s time for us to turn the page, and start a new history.