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blow in welcome to cross stock where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle has a so called american century come to an end. if so, how did it come about? was it poor leadership or the mission to lead the world itself was always destined to fail and what follows the end of the american century? aah! crow! sucking the end of the american century, i'm joined by my guess peter cousin, akin. bethesda. he's a professor of history and director of the nucular studies institute at american university as well as co author, with all the persona of the untold history of the united states. in istanbul, we have pepe escobar. he's an independent geopolitical analyst and author specializing in eurasia. and in callaway, across the jama baraka, he is a national organizer for the black alliance for peace or

a gentleman. crosstalk rules in effect, that means you can jump anytime you want. and i always appreciate peggy, let me go to you. i mean that this is bait is program is kind of based on this article by david preston are in harper's magazine and it was the title of the article was empire burlesque. and it kind of said a lot of shockwave, lot of people really kind of surprised me, but i don't think anybody on this panel would be surprised by it whatsoever. and i found it really quite amusing that this was such a bold article and you know, and you know, it, it, it is a and a critique of the, of the elite and all that. i thought it was a good chronology, but he didn't say anything that was particularly interesting or new. go ahead, pepe. wow, this is a mediocre se. mediocre asked for mediocre readers in america. you know, the best writers in across the erasure russians. chinese iranians, pakistan. these indians across latin america, the best brazilians, argentinean 0. bryan's across africa. well,

they have been writing about this in detail for over 10 years now. if not, since the meet to thousands at the height of the war on terror. basically, we all know that the free lunch that lasted for 75 years is older. so we are now discussing what's gonna happen next, of course. and you just need to take a look at what's happening at the s seal some. busy in september in summer, what happened at the breaks summit in beijing a few weeks ago? what happened after the run 3 part by some it's the again why easy and putting in that on this week? this is, why are we going the interaction of all of these institutions across eurasia, towards what the russians themselves have called greater eurasia partnership, but it's bigger than eurasia. it's, i would say it's, you know, you'll wrap freak asia as well. let's bring africa to it. and let's bring less than

america. it's is the new world. it's been, it's absolutely. i agree with peter. if the, if i could read a quick fragment from the article here are, well, we doom to witness the return of great power rivalry in which the united states in china, bye for influence. or will that a decline of the us per produce novel forms of international collaboration kind of dovetailing on what peppy has to say, is it, is this even an important question anymore? i mean, i that, that, you know, because really the, the way the, this article is written about american leads, should we lament the end of the american century or not? i mean, i don't even think that's a question anymore. and i think this is what this mindset is all about. the world is moving on and the us has to find its place in it. that's probably a better way of putting it go ahead. peter of biden came to power, saying that he was going to restore our american aj emily after the trump years. and he was going to unite the europeans behind the americans. and i says,

is going to provide leadership to the world. and we see how well that's worked out, situation internationally has only gotten worse in the past 2 years. and the reason why we can't allow this kind of bifurcation, this kind of division is because we're facing existential crises with dealing with the climate is the most obvious while now as the, as europe is burning, as the runways are melting and london, i as the fires this, this, the heat wave people are dying. it's only going to get worse, only going to get much, much worse. and we're facing an existential crisis because of the nuclear threat. the west is committed, europeans in the united states are committed to defeating russia. even though they themselves say, many leaders understand that if they succeeded and made potent desperate,

then russia would likely resort to nuclear weapons, which would again potentially precipitate the end of life on the planet. so we data position will have the luxury to sit back and allow the 2 sides with their insular views and backward notions to destroy our planet. so are facing a serious crisis right now. american hegemony isn't as, as already, and it even charles krauthammer in 1090 proud hammer. now this is america's unipolar moment, right in 2002. he says i was wrong. this is a unit poly iraq sack last 30 or 40 years like i thought it's going to last indefinitely. but by 2006, even krauthammer, after the devil's in iraq and afghanistan, even krauthammer, had to admit that the american unipolar moment and unipolar erode, were a fantasy. so we've known this oliver stone and i wrote about this extensively and

unfold history and my other colleagues on the show been writing about this, talking about it for years. the question is, how do we prevent this from turning into the crisis that ends life on our planet? a jumbo. i think it's really interesting um, noting what peter and peppy have already said here is it can't, can the world survive america reckoning? that is a lot longer the hedge amount, i mean, this is what it really gets down to because it, so in session was the political leads in the united states. and the, the, it is so narrow the definition of how they see their place in the world. it's either all or, or they'll be chaos again. this article was very light headed in the way i look at it is because it doesn't look at the, the reality is playing out on the ground and is peppy said here the world is moving on. and the u. s. s the find its place in it, and that's something that americans can't contemplate because of american exceptionalism, which we'll talk about later. go ahead and cali or, you know,

of heated you're absolutely right. the other commenters are spot on the money. the basically what we have is at the u. s. the lead on able to, to excel the new political reality. they seem to be committed to their notion of full spectrum dominance no matter what the conditions are. and it seems that they are prepared to basically blow up the world in order to maintain the dominance of the, of the european project. and that's why we say to david this, this represents the existential threat to collective global. you manage that there's a pathological commitment on the part of the, of the white west, if you will, or to maintain global hegemony is putting all of us a threat. and that basically, unless and until we able to ship power from the u. s. u natal project.

all of us are facing the possibility of a global catastrophe. well, peppy, i mean what, what is driving this here? i mean, from the west, there is an ideological for you. is it just economic a gemini? because i always, i tend to fall back on the sense of american exceptionalism, that they, the american elite. and he talks about here, liberal intervention is versus restraints, which i think is a joke because both camps, it, if you want to say they believe in american exceptionalism. and that is the great barrier to accept the fact that we are a pre ordained to run the world. that is something that is part of the american dna . how do they deal with it? pepe. well, in continental europe, it's still the primacy of the ideas of the, like, this is something that we see, especially in france and new jersey. yeah. but don't you know, peppy, don't you think they, that i think they're actually in defiance of their own ideals. you know, sanctity,

a problem to process freedom of speech. i've still no, no they, it's all, it's all rubbish. okay. i don't think they, they never did one with it on signing the enlightenment. go ahead, pepe. yeah. but they don't see it is that it's amazing. i like i live between east and west as a lot of people know. i just came back from natal stand in france for almost 3 months and i arrived finished a move in. i feel relieved. i can have anita lecture dialogue in you stumble, which i tried many times to having paris and it's absolutely impossible. and these people the know their enlightment by heart, but they simply don't see how their own ideals are melting nowadays. in the you case, different the okay, is it still a little bit of a white man's burden? last and of course in america is in every cielo of intelligence or so called the power outage in us is about american exceptionalism. it's an extremely america

centric view of the world, and we don't need to go back to live east coast to, to once again state that the americans are, as a rule of thumb simply cannot understand the other. and the problem is the other, which is basically the global south, which is 88 percent of the world's population. now they are finding an alternative model or alternative converging models. and they are trying to build literally a new system of international relations for from the point of view. busy of from an a gym monic point of view, either continental europe, yuki or america, or, and the collective west as oh, this is be owned anathema, this is the ultimate right. what is assumption that this one will never happen in history? but peter, this, this mindset when i call it american exceptionalism, but, i mean, and it's eurocentric as well. and it's untenable. i mean,

it's really amazing. you know, you look at europe right now because of what's going on ukraine, and they have an energy crisis, possible food crisis, their food banks here. and they still co, all these ideas that they're the center of the world. go ahead peter. well they, in some ways they are still very, very relevant and very important. you know, we can discount the west when we're looking at the future of humanity at this point . the problem is that they're so short sighted take the case of biden, yet biden wants to weaken russia. he wants to punish russia. and in order to do so, he is effectively creating conditions in the u. s. and in much of the rest of the world that are going, especially in the us now, the big issue on people's mind is inflation. the cost of living gas, housing,

all these real concerns and what biden's policies are doing now in order to punish russia, is exacerbating that making it worse. creating more suffering is approval ratings are in the low to mid thirty's right now. and what it is, effectively doing is saying he's willing to allow donald trump the republicans, the fascists. that climate on ires, pete apparently no blanche. i've been here. i have to go to a hard break. and after that hard break, we'll continue our discussion on the end of the american century, staying with our team ah so called enhanced interrogation techniques used by the u. s. officials

were basically designed as techniques to break down the human mind. if you force a human being to stay in a certain position doesn't take very long for the pain involved to become absolutely excruciating. but nobody screen finger on you. you are doing it to yourself. we started adopting those techniques when i was stationed in mosul. among them were stress, possession, sleep deprivation. inducing hypothermia. there's already beginning to be evidence that these old techniques are now being used on immigrant children. whatever you do or more comes from home. nobody has been held accountable for the torture that happened in the past and the moral authority, the made america will sacrifice the shimmer of effective interrogation in the united states has had

a variety of tools to use and tax on other countries. economic sanctions are, are often just the beginning. another thing you like to do is place some military pressure on the countries that you're talking about and there has to be an effort to demonize that country and the leader of that country. we have a responsibility for the whole world and we need to make rules for the rest. because without us there will be ah

welcome back to cross stock where all things are considered on peter la built to remind you were discussing the end of the american century. ah. go back to peter in bethesda, i'm sorry i had to cut you up. we had to go to a hard break, go ahead, finish your thought peter. lenny quite frequently chest. he said in individuals insanity is rare. but in groups, parties, nations, and epics. it is the rule up to this point i least till 77 years ago with the it's hammock bombs at hiroshima and nagasaki. we did not have the power to and life on the planet the way we do now. so i, you see in the united states, democracy is very, very fragile right now. you've got one party committed to destroying american

democracy. the little bit democracy. it is still remains in the united states and biden, in his policy and his efforts to, to weaken punish russia is bringing about the collapse, the further destruction of american democracy, bringing the trumpets back into power. it takes no rational sense. and what we're seeing on a global scale right now also makes no rational sense. so, i mean, i think we're at it at a crucial turning point. because the united states, while it might not have the moral authority and might not have the economic power that at once did still has the power to bring the world down. and so that's what makes us so dangerous. and others recognize at the meeting in anchorage between lincoln a sullivan and a to chop, chop chinese foreign policy officials back in march of last year. when wang ye says to blanket to sullivan, he says,

you don't have the authority to talk to us like this. any more, you can't talk to us when position of strength. well, that's true, but there is nobody providing international leisure pepe is more optimistic, but he was a global south than i am right now. because i see a struggle that is much more dangerous and much more unresolved. i see some positive development. i also see negative ones. i see yoon winning in south korea. i see japan moving sharply to the right. i see a lot of very dangerous trends as well. as some positive ones. ok, let's go back to a cow here. one of the things that i bit of observed here on how the global south is reacted to the situation in ukraine. and i think it's important to state here is that the global south no longer the 1st law doesn't respect the west any more because of its hypocrisy. but it doesn't fear it is much either. and that is a significant paradigm shift right now, because we see the global south is basically saying, you know,

we don't want to get involved in a conflict that you generated. then we can talk about the origins while we want. but they're saying it's not our fight and why should and then if it, when the idea of sovereignty or you have to protect ukraine sovereignty. but the global south is saying, we're going to protect our sovereignty too, by not getting involved in your fight. and i think this is a paradigm shift there. they're no longer respect or fear the west go ahead in cali . but you know what, you know, peter, you know, you're right. oh, but i think that when we single the self to isn't understanding that in fact, power is shifting to, to the non european world if you will. and so there's always been a understanding of the potential power here in the global. so we understood the, the parasitic relationship between the development of the north and the on the development of the south. but now the conditions are such that basically there's the possibility of more effective resistance as to what we see in the globe of our, the experiment taking place of the reconstruction of societies along

a new path of development and new lines of, of values. and that is something i think is very, very positive. one of the things that we have to understand is that what makes the north so incredibly dangerous? is this, this, this inflated sense of itself in, but believe that without if a leadership global leadership that the, that the world can no longer exist, as we know, it goes back to your point about about us exceptionalism. you have your opinion exceptionalism, the psychopath. biology, a white supremacist white supremacists, etiology has to be addressed front and center. the europeans have to understand that they're no longer the center of the world. and again, when they understand that, and we able to, to make that reflect a material reality, that is shifting power from the europeans, that we have the possibility of developing and constructing

a new world. ok pepe in this article here by this david bresner a essentially is asking, what is the world like after the american century? is it a good thing should be we'd be afraid because i think i think you're right, peter is a little bit more pessimistic. you're a little bit more optimistic. where do you, where does it go from here? because that the global system ever since 945 has been centered on the west, specifically the united states that is slowly drifting away. is that a good thing? a bad thing, a dangerous thing. go ahead, pepe. well, if i was really a passive nihilist not an active night list as nature. i will give up completely and isolate myself, one of volcanic island, somewhere. i still, i still, i still, i'm a writer in writers as you all know the di writing. so i will die writing and at least trying to find the array of lights into,

into this mile strong. edgar alone polls miles from in fact. and that's why these past few years, i have been focusing on what's happening across the region, the development slowly, but surely of all these organizations, this young guy, corporation, organization, eurasia, economic union, now bricks plus, which is something that the chinese and the russians have been pushing for quite a while now, the c s t o o, the projects of the new silk roads and merging with the russian concept of greater ration partnership and how all of these organizations and this, a framework across eurasia is spilling over towards africa, latin america. but then the remote to be share here to be fair here, you know, this is one of the origins of the crisis in ukraine because, you know, ukraine has to be part of the west. because if you have to separate it from russia

to weaken russia, the reason why i bring this up, i go to peter right now, is that i agree with what peppy. have been talking about all these organizations, but the us is not very happy about it because it wants to maintain the deputy and that's what makes it a very dangerous country. go ahead, peter. no question about that. you know, it leaves me some interesting trends and some hopeful trends. latin america, a lot of progressives are winning elections now and lula hopefully will come back to power. in brazil there are some good things happening. but then we also see this august deal. i. india is a very important player, as the biggest, the 2nd biggest country in the world, and will soon be the, the largest country in the world. and is trying to, like many countries that people don't want to choose sides. the u. s. is trying to force, attract countries to choose sides again,

and people are resisting. and that's a positive part of the positive trend of puppies. i correctly identifying. but we have such big problems that we need to somehow figure out a way for the u. s. in the europeans to get back in the game in a positive sense. because even if we've talked look about global warming. if the that what, what one of the consequences of what this war that the russian invasion of ukraine is setting back the need for boot dealing aggressively with global warming setting this back potentially for years is and so yeah, but, but peter doesn't know and you try to convince me that these people actually believe this about climate change. i mean, if it is so existential, so dire, and they flip on it on a dime, no, we have to go after russia 1st. i mean, the sincere people. are they just buffoons? well then up the phones that's, that's part of the problem and they can be dangerous it because of their

ideology, because the way they view the world and this goes back to the start of the cold war . you know, i ran the start and found most important document for me is a memo, they've george kennan rotan, 948. when he says the u. s. has 6.3 percent of the world's population, but controls 50 percent of the world health. in our how we can to maintain this position of disparity. we live in a world that we're the richest. 8 people are more wealth than the poor's for 1000000000 people. more and more people are falling into poverty, you know, and so we have serious, serious, crazy, and that, that, that we've got that's what neoliberalism is created for all of us. ok. let's go back to cali because what i think is really interesting is that with the rise of the global, so it doesn't seem to be very ideological to me. i mean, i, i look at, you know, sovereignty prosperity. i mean, those are simple ideas to understand and not all this garbage that's coming out of

the west rules based order. whatever that means. ok, i mean, i think what we need is more pragmatism. unless ideology, go ahead and cali will. you know, we need that and we also need to chose to include in the picture, the parasitic relationship, the non exportation is, was driving much of politics here. and so also that they understand that we can no longer continue in a relationship of dependency with the global north with of the, the global capital, a system that is dependent on the continuation of the oppression exportation of people around the world. so that's why people don't want to be pulled into this conflict in europe, even though they are being detrimentally impacted by this conflict. there's also why the u. s. as unable us in europe, is unable to, to bring people long, politically, an ideologically nicole self. because people all this off, remember that was zalinski and ukraine are tempted to try to renegotiate the dead

dead payments with, with europe. we remember that most of the global, some nations failed to get any kind of relief our from, from debt payments at the height of the pandemic. so these kinds of relationships are, are fresh in our minds and therefore these moral appeals to join them in there are glorious struggle against the rushes fall on deaf ears. we recognize again, that until there is a, until we on to mine be the prestige of the west. this notion of the, of the west are being the leaders of humanity and that we all should be striving to, to, to, to, to be a part of that. and to see that as a model and so on. the west understands other people, the west understand that they no longer can be the sensor. then we're going to continue with this, these appeals to exceptionalism. and for that, for that to well, i guess the big question is, can we survive the,

the period after the american center? we're all going to find out because it's not happening right now gentlemen, that's all the time we have here. i want to thank my guests in college with that, and it is symbol, and i want to thank our viewers for watching us here at r t c. and next time, remember cross up with ah, with the really only paying for those with summers leave not be up to stumble was then. yeah. like i'm not seeing them, but the head nozzles poignant a shall fall out at last, but i had on that mission with daily mother. and when i see what i do well,

that's edible. up. let me look it up. let me ask with global, don't you go to me to see you. you also the up us, they knew about the one, like i was also political. a mission with them. i'll grave on you. go run it up to the almost a shape out. the thing becomes the african and engagement. it was the trail.

when so many find themselves will depart. we choose to look so common ground. aah agrees. foreign minister says budapest wants to buy more russian gas and won't get through the winter without it, as they used to go with the repercussions of it and russian sanctions, africa, criticizes europe. so you turn calls to increased energy supplies in an attempt to replace the brushing commodities of the years of setbacks over fossil fuel development projects across the continent. as part of the salt green agenda. a new builder will decide for to read because the future with us is making its way through congress. the country is said to choose between becoming a u. s. state.