Save us from the conspiracy strategists!

The combined threat of CRINK and its subsidiary, the Axis of Resistance, is a threat largely of our creating

We are bombarded lately with all sorts of expert warnings about globe-spanning anti-America alliances. This is a weird reflexive response that has long plagued our strategic thinking — even since the end of the Cold War:

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• The world is binary, no spectrum

• If you’re not with US, then you’re against US

• If you’re against US, then you’re part of a global conspiracy

• That conspiracy is all about ending the US order and US “unipolarity”

• America’s loss of unipolarity is a tragedy unto itself; we were fools to encourage multipolarity within a globalized economy (What a dangerous fantasy!).

In the traditional realist mindset, those recognized realities extend further into:

• There are no appreciable differences in these enemies’ individual goals and desires, as they all seek chaos (confirming the world is in chaos)

• Thus, America needs to build and operate a military capable of taking on that entire stacked threat

• Moreover, if we don’t confront this axis of evil at every point around the globe, then they are winning

• As we are thusly heading toward an inevitable WWIII, then a full bore, planet-wide containment and arms racing strategy is our only choice (we are beset with “gaps”!).

The Trumpian/MAGA variant expands on the “fools” argument to decry globalization in general as a mistake/lie/conspiracy. Therefore, the only route left for national salvation is White Christian Nationalism that openly aligns itself with certain likeminded players within that suspected global anti-American conspiracy (If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!).

This is how Putin/Russia are re-designated as “good,” along with any strongman leader (Hungary’s Orban, Turkey’s Erdogan, Azerbaijan’s Aliyev, etc.) out there who preaches similar faith in ethno-nationalism and some braindead mercantilist economics.

That’s how Kim Jong Un can be a good guy as far as Trump is concerned. It’s also how Iran can be re-cast as reasonable by a number of far-right US voices, bleeding into a certain anti-Semitism born of the Great Replacement Theory (Jewish globalists seeking to poison and mongrelize Northern populations with dirty Global South blood). Conversely, this explains the open-check support of Netanyahu in Israel, as he continues to push that democracy to its breaking point. [And yes, it is possible to be both anti-Semitic and pro-Israel in this universe of characters.]