ISSN 2562-9948
The April 30, 2019, coup attempt in Venezuela has come and gone. The coup has failed. “Failed state” theory just got a lot more complicated. No longer can the “failed state” designation apply only to those states targeted for recolonization after a prolonged period of destabilization and foreign intervention. Now “failed state” theory has to […]
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Apart from employing German Nazi scientists, and adopting the methods, principles, and science of the Nazis in developing modern warfare, for what other purposes were Nazis sought after the end of World War II? How were Italian Fascists able to perpetuate their ideology and expand their networks after the US had occupied Italy, and particularly […]
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Has anything out of the ordinary happened to the US as an imperialist power since the ascent of Trump to office? While the continuities between Trump and his predecessors are considerable, have there been any significant discontinuities that mark the first year of this presidency? Is there any reason to think that the rise of […]
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Is Brexit bad for UK universities? This appears to be the question at the centre of an article from the Times Higher Education titled “UK researchers face uncertainty over EU grant applications” (David Matthews, June 29, 2016), which was approvingly reprinted in the Bulletin of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (Vol. 63, No. 7, […]
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This and previous issues have been archived on a dedicated site—please see: ENCIRCLING EMPIRE. For frequent updates, please “like” our Facebook page and/or follow on Twitter. Over the period of a month, from October to November of this year, an experiment was attempted: to deliver an extended “lecture” via Zero Anthropology and its Twitter and […]
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If the present provides a hint of what it is to come, the nastiest, ugliest, and bloodiest wars to be fought this century will be between states opposed to continued US dominance, and the force multipliers of US dominance. We see the outline of sovereign self-defense programs that take diverse forms, from the banning of […]
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Countering Scientism with Scientism Another sort of “physics” has emerged, right from within the same establishment of military and political institutions that produced “force multipliers”. If this other physics has attained the prominence that it has, such that it now has a foothold in academia and is a firm part of popular discourse in the […]
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Security for US Capitalists: The State Department and its Global Partners Very much in line in with the idea of “connected capitalism,” the US State Department created the office of advisor for global partnerships, a Senate-confirmed position (Stavridis & Farkas, 2012, p. 17; see also DoS, 2015, 2015/3/12). The Secretary of State’s Office of Global […]
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“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist—McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps”. (Friedman, 1999/3/28) With keenly supportive interest from […]
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Imperialism by Invitation or Imitation? US efforts in remaking the international system according to an image reflecting the US are not usually in complete vain since the track has already has already been cut. To continue with the analogy, US policy planners and military analysts are concerned about widening and then paving the track so […]
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The force multiplier mechanism is not just something envisioned in military writing, but is instead a cornerstone of US intervention, both overt and covert. The CIA uses the term “disruption” when referring to the covert support of allied agencies who aid the CIA in the capture of so-called “terrorists”—collaborating security forces in other countries then […]
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Much of what appears as “novel” thinking in US imperial strategies, masks deeper historical foundations. Numerous authors have already explained how Latin America and the Caribbean, from the early 1800s onward, have served as “laboratories” for incubating and developing strategies of destabilization, intervention, occupation, and counterinsurgency. More recently, counterinsurgency was being sold as a new […]
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While it is an odd mix of physics, biology, and geometry that has captured the communications strategy of military planners, the messages themselves are very telling about how such planners go about envisioning US global domination, and the parts to be played by others in assuring that dominance. Some thus speak about the “center of […]
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“A fundamental law of Netwonian physics applies also to military maneuver: one can achieve overwhelming force by substituting velocity for mass”. (Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, 2003) “Are we to reserve the techniques and the right to manipulate peoples as the privilege of a few planning, goal-oriented and power-hungry individuals to whom the instrumentality of […]
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For an empire whose imperialism is still denied by many, a striking number of terms and concepts have been generated by US leaders that nonetheless are premised on the root idea of “force” in achieving or securing US “global leadership”. These terms command the language of US military, political, and corporate spokespersons, and they have […]
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ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY 