This past weekend, the Ukrainians fired missiles at Russia. It’s not the first time. U.S. fingerprints are all over this attack, too. It was yet another provocation to war with Russia. A war with Russia wouldn’t be a limited affair, despite the conceits emanating from Washington. And it wouldn’t revolve around Ukraine’s future. It would center on the fate of the American empire.

Reported CNN:

The Russian Ministry of Defense said in a post on Telegram that Ukraine carried out the attack using “US-supplied ATACMS operational-tactical missiles equipped with cluster warheads.”

According to Reuters, the attack “killed at least four people and injured 151.” The missiles weren’t just U.S. supplied. Russia charged that the “U.S. military had aimed them and provided data.” The technology used would have included a U.S. Global Hawk surveillance drone. An unconfirmed report from Pravda via Newsweek is that Russia just downed a Global Hawk over the Black Sea. The U.S. contests the claim.

The Biden administration is pushing brinkmanship with Russia. Of course, that’s a monumental gamble. Washington’s defense and foreign affairs establishment is trying to win through intimidation what Ukraine isn’t winning on battlefields, regardless tens of billions of dollars in U.S. aid and hands-on support. But brinkmanship with Russia opens the door to miscalculations. Triggering a conventional war between the world’s premier nuclear-armed powers risks escalation to nuclear conflict.

American provocations are for reasons far deeper. A Russian victory in Ukraine is regarded as a direct challenge to U.S. dominance in Europe and would reverberate globally. The U.S’s stepped-up confrontations with Russia are necessary from Washington’s perspective. Washington elites are exhibiting an intensifying anxiety; they’ve lost the initiative. Washington wagered that with U.S. and NATO backing, Ukraine would prevail against a heavily discounted Russia. Washington’s conceit underestimated Russian resolve and resourcefulness. Increasingly direct involvement by the U.S. is a response to its blunder.

Saving -- or salvaging -- Ukraine is now imperative to the U.S’s longstanding strategy to bring Russia to heel. Retaining U.S. lone global dominance is the aim, however vain the pursuit.

Columbia University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs addressed the U.S.’s post-Cold War strategy in a detailed opinion piece for Common Dreams, a progressive news outlet. Sachs, a longtime advisor and confidante to high-ranking Democrats and a leader of U.N. initiatives, wrote on June 19:

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. grand strategy has been to weaken Russia. As early as 1992, then Defense Secretary Richard Cheney opined that following the 1991 demise of the Soviet Union, Russia too should be dismembered. Zbigniew Brzezinski opined in 1997 that Russia should be divided into three loosely confederated entities in Russian Europe, Siberia, and the far east. In 1999, the U.S.-led NATO alliance bombed Russia’s ally, Serbia, for 78 days in order to break Serbia apart and install a massive NATO military base in breakaway Kosovo. Leaders of the U.S. military-industrial complex vociferously supported the Chechen war against Russia in the early 2000s.

Sachs’ article enumerates the many broken promises made to the Russians -- starting with Gorbachev -- about NATO expansion eastward. He also discussed Washington’s “grand strategy” in an interview with Tucker Carlson on May 28.

Washington foundering in its efforts to break Russia’s back have adverse unintended consequences. Destroying the Nord Stream pipeline was supposed to cripple Russian natural gas revenues generated in sales across Europe. Russia has found markets elsewhere and its liquified gas is back in Europe, in part.

A U.S. orchestrated economic boycott of Russia is failing, too. The boycott has driven Russia closer to China. Nixon and Kissinger must be weeping. More ominously, it’s given new impetus to BRICS, which is a consortium of countries led by Russia, China, and India to establish an alternative to the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

The U.S. depends on the dollar’s dominance to finance entitlements and feed Washington’s unending appetite for spending. Federal deficits and debt are ballooning and are projected to worsen in the next decade.

If BRICS eventually succeeds, and lacking remedial financial and budgetary reforms by Washington, displacing the dollar with other currencies will knock the props out from under the federal government. The resultant cascading effect would wreak havoc on the U.S. economy.

Contrary to recent reports, Saudi Arabia hasn’t dropped the dollar as a currency of exchange. But according to the Mises Institute, Saudi Arabia is trending away from the dollar. The development portends poorly for the U.S.

From the Mises Wire, June 15:

One could reasonably argue, however, that these reports of the decline of the petrodollar are only wrong in their particulars. The reports do reflect a real-world trend, however, and that’s likely why the stories about the end of petrodollar may seem plausible to many. The Kingdom of Saudi Araba (KSA) has been increasingly moving further away from the US orbit in recent years, and this is reflected in an increased willingness to settle oil deals in non-dollar currencies. There are also other indications that the Saudis are more and more willing to embrace Washington’s adversaries -- such as China and Iran and Russia -- in spite of Washington’s objections. While short run changes may seem minor, the current trend in US-Saudi relations points to an overall and significant decline in US global influence.

Therein lies another clue as to why the U.S. is willing to engage in brinkmanship. Russia is a prime mover in BRICS. BRICS isn’t just a means of freeing nations from the dollar’s dictates; it’s a strategic play to undercut U.S. global dominance. Washington’s addiction to spending, entitlements, and debt makes the U.S. needlessly vulnerable.

Per Commerce Trust, “The national debt now exceeds total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), producing a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 120%.” Efforts at fiscal sobriety were abandoned as the 2000s progressed. Washington handed Russia and China a sword. In a pitiless world of contending nations, why won’t those countries use that sword if they deem it in their best interests?

The U.S. experienced an extraordinary run post-World War II. It won the Cold War and then enjoyed a generation of unquestioned dominance, but the reality is shifting as realities inevitably do. Whatever the vicissitudes of time, excess, profligacy and, in no small measure, conceit and overreach are hastening the end of empire. Playing global policeman and the costs in blood and treasure of forever wars are having adverse, cumulative effect.

Douglas Macgregor wrote for The American Conservative, June 24:

Unfortunately, Washington is currently populated with far too many men and women who cannot reconcile the reality of the new world that is emerging with Washington’s failed vision of hegemony. This delusional state of mind reinforces the idiotic belief that political, economic and military conflict or crisis is inevitably a contest between absolute virtue and absolute evil.

Whatever Washington’s reasoning, it’s best to remember that America was never intended to be an empire. It was created as a republic. It was never to roam the globe on moral crusades, which, too many times, were thin disguises for power acquisition and economic exploitation. Our military was for our defense, not a profit center for special interests. We were to have a government of the people, tending to laws that made our society civil and safe. Our government wasn’t supposed to “capture” commerce but referee it to ensure that the rules of the game were fair. Government has become incessantly profligate. We were to be a free, strong, and prosperous people minding our affairs.

Perhaps the end of empire will open the way to the return of the Republic?

J. Robert Smith can be found at Gab, @JRobertSmith. He blogs occasionally at Flyover. He’s returned to X. His handle there is @JRobertSmith1.

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