There is not a state on the planet today that is worth salvage; nope, not a single government that deserves our sympathy, empathy, concern, or hope. They deserve only our disdain and disbelief. They are all failed states, and the sustainability of humankind depends on a clean break with the old paradigm of states assuming a natural right to power over individuals.
The concept of a failed state was inspired by Ronald Reagan’s so-called "terrorist state". That’s where the War on Terror began, as the Reagan administration hoodwinked the people by insisting "the new plague of the modern age is terrorism, a return to barbarism, and we must defend ourselves" or some other similar sort of transparent rhetoric. In 1994, Clinton called the concept of a state-sanctioned collective boogieman a "rogue state", and the people were made to be afraid.
And then there was the "failed state", and it was maintained that such states, impoverished and menial as they are, threaten our national security. Places like Iraq, the greater Middle East and even poor, little Haiti, according to the doctrine, would require direct intervention in order to save them from themselves. In the process, they would be certainly doomed to devastation.
Ironically, even during the Clinton administration, scholars in major journals such as Foreign Affairs noted that in much of the world, the US is considered the leading failed state and the greatest terrorist threat to man. But the US citizenry would never believe this, considering the Fourth Branch of the Government – the media – does not report on international opinion in its entertainment news.
Without a doubt, the US has taken on the aura of a state as failed as any. Although the attention is on the fiscal deficit in the mainstream, what is sometimes termed the "democratic deficit" is as good an indicator of the peril of a nation as any: the overwhelming gap between public policy and public opinion. And this is a conservative view. Much of the population knows that the government is not on their side, though most are merely too comfortable and scared to do anything about it. And who can blame them? Their very freedom and survival could depend on making too much of a fuss about the depravity of their abusers. If even the US population has an inkling of their own lack of freedom and liberty, then it is safe to presume that people elsewhere in the world do not buy into the so-called "democracy promotion" mission espoused by the US internationally. In other words, the US propaganda machine has ceased to function as it once did.
That "democratic deficit" surely has led to the US increasing the threat of nuclear war. US militarism has birthed a violent offensive against whole swathes of the world that will lead to what the CIA terms "blowback." And this blowback could result in massive attacks against the number-one aggressor and failed state on the planet, the US. The American political system and its many arms, like the Pentagon and finance capital, are so desperate that they tax their public at staggering rates in order to fund the militarization of space to the tune of 95% of total expenditures or more. They do this because they know that the blowback from US imperialism will be destructive, and that the Federal Reserve Note will be devalued and eventually unrecognized as a medium of exchange.
In the meanwhile, down here where Mother Earth toils at the mercy of the State, the US war machine breathes life into terrorists all over the globe. The CIA and other US intelligence agencies and analysts openly admit that Iraq has been turned into a ground zero for training highly professional terrorists, mostly Iraqis. The warriors are aimed to be delivered throughout many parts of the world where they use their training to terrorize and provoke a reaction. Whereas Iraq, prior to the invasion, was free from connections to terrorist organizations, it is now a center of sophisticated terrorist activity.
The US, like failed empires before it, has expanded its sphere of influence to encompass the entire globe. From Latin America in the nineteenth century to Europe in the twentieth and the Middle East in the twenty-first, the US has built the biggest empire in world history. The type of state-run management of the world the US has enjoyed since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a dream of Lenin or Stalin. But a key difference between, say, occupied Poland under the Soviets and Iraq or any other US-occupied country – from Latin America to Europe, Japan to Africa – is that everybody wants the US out. For instance, 87% of Iraqis virtually from the outset of the Iraq War have demanded a timetable for withdrawal. It’s doubtful that such high numbers were found in Vichy, France or Soviet occupied Poland. In other words, the US Empire is more unsustainable at this point than Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union before their collapses.
According to the Fund for Peace’s and Foreign Policy magazine’s 2012 Failed States Index, not even the United States is safe from collapse. This is a truism for anybody who understands just what an overstretched military, politicized monetary policy and societal moral and ethical decay means for a nation. Looking at the map of the world, in terms of failed states, is both a frightening and a hopeful sign. Yes, the world is in utter chaos and every single government in the world – except for apparently Canada, Australia and Scandinavia – are stampeding their way towards a red alert collapse. But, simultaneously, this creates the sort of vacuum in which a stateless, free world could emerge. According to the Index, the US is about as stable as the southern tip of South America in Chile and Argentina.
Failed states can take on varied and dissimilar aesthetics, like the bloodletting of places where war – led by more opulent, and therefore desperate failed states like the US and the UK – dots the landscape with blood and the salt of tears. Other failed states are poor nations drained economically by international institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations. Such international organizations arise from the flight of capital from opulent failed states. They are a symptom and result of the phenomenon of all states failing. In the end, failed states give way to the soon-to-be failed states of tomorrow. The central difference between the latter and former is that the latter, relying on the pooling of funds from allied failed states, assume a more global right to power over states and, ultimately, individuals. Thus making them all the more dangerous in their entropy.
The troubles plaguing the failed states of the world range from not only poor health care, absent or decayed infrastructure, hunger, but also ruthless tyrants hell-bent on carnage and destruction or cultural wars over things as natural as melanin levels (different skin tones).
At times, nations which on the surface share not even the least hints of commonness, have a surprising amount in common when viewed as failed states. In the photos below, the difference between Sacramento, Californnia and Sirte, Libya is outright war on the streets. In other words, while the US has invaded Libya, Libya has not invaded the US. In other ways, the two failed states are similar.
In California, a tent city is born:
While in Libya, a war rages on:
But, given the vector of time, what is clearly a police state in the US might give way to the sort of violence experienced in textbook failed states of the past, such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. A new status quo will be born, having buried the idea of the US amid decadent turmoil, and the US will be no better from war torn failed states.
An army amasses in Portland, Oregon:
The fate of the US is anybody’s guess. Futurists might sometimes conjecture correctly about dates and events, even overall cultural trends of a civilization, but there are many ways failure manifests. Whilst some people think that the US is devolving towards certain holocaust, perhaps the state will persist in a manner more akin to North Korea: lasting, painstaking misery. Just like the North Korea of today, the US of the future very well could be a horrific place persistently refusing to collapse – a hell for its inhabitants. North Korea has so far outlasted the disintegration of its Communist patron, the Soviet Union; the death of its founder and 46 year dictator, Kim Il Sung, in 1995; and the world’s worst famine in decades, which led to the starvation of hundreds of thousands of people at least. Last year saw the death of Kim Jong Il and the rise of his son, Kim Jong Un. It’s tough to know what’s going on inside the closed, failed state, but it appears the North still has the ability to persist.
The US has already begun to endure its own fair share of misery and famine. Since 2008, a bankrupt and rogue world financial system has hijacked the state instruments and forced the population and future generations to subsidize their own enslavement and slaughter. The public number is about $16 trillion, but the worldwide derivatives market exceeds $1.2 quadrillion, dwarfing the planet’s GDP. The bailout culture in the US and the west implies that the worldwide taxpayer, with the US taxpayer at the forefront if history is any gauge, is expected to back this fanciful excursion into economic wonderland. The same pillaging has happened to Europe as the traditional "core" of civilization – US, UK, and Europe – joins the "periphery" in poverty.
Quantitative Easing since 2009 has teased the abyss of full-blown failed statehood via currency collapse, whilst endless wars continue no matter the party in power. Another sign of a failed state? Dictatorship. Would you like Pepsi or Coke to kill off your brain cells? Republican or Democrat to lead the stateship over the edge of the ocean? It does not matter Moving right along, the US is experiencing its worst drought since the 1960s, as disaster has been declared in 26 US states, making it the largest US national disaster ever declared.
An impotent population in the face of full spectrum dominance demonstrates that many in the US are suffering from North Korea syndrome: Whatever Dear Leader says is the truth, is the truth, no matter where the facts point. Despite the reality that the American political system faces an angry population, it treads waters floating towards continued war, shrinking civil rights and inflation via a measured mixture of deceit, lying, fabrication, public relations and poisoning of the population.
The political power gained by the fanatical despots in charge the last failed state is used to lead the nation to nuclear war, economic collapse and environmental disaster. The technocrats, lobbyists and politicians all seem committed to using the US government to enhance those threats. And, although the US population is opposed, they are excluded from the decision-making process, and making a fuss about is a jail-able offense.
That all states are failed states should really come as no surprise, for entropy is not a political issue, but a matter of course. Any cries for suffrage or equality lose all significance when the state, from its incipience, is programmed to fail. States are merely temporary monuments designed to order our lives, maintaining power for those motivated enough to seek it. But the state needs perpetual maintenance in order to remain relevant, and while the power-hungry cannot divorce from the state, the rest of us who merely wish to lead happy and peaceful lives can. And that is where our power lies. The notion that the state is a con is gaining momentum. It's a notion that doesn't need to be backed by guns. It just has to take root in our minds, for it is in mind where all failed states go to die.
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Justin O’Connell studied History and German Language at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, where, in his spare time, he researched current events and their relationship to history. In his studies he has found that societies have been managed by philosophically-kindred ruling classes seeking persistently a singular, total order across the planet. Justin does not believe in government as a medium for human relationships, preferring instead the race of human ideas stemming from a diverse, vibrant culture. Currently, he is a proponent of physical silver as a means of wealth preservation and disobedience to the financial system, and lives in southern California. He writes at the Dollar Vigilante-inspired site, Silver Vigilante.
