America is a Threat to Humanity
The stakes couldn't be higher - the choice between serious resistance or complicity in our own extinction becomes starker with each passing day.
The illusion of American imperial decline lies shattered amidst the rubble of Syrian cities and the smoldering ruins of Gaza. As human rights advocate Dan Kovalik grimly observes, what we're witnessing isn't the death throes of an empire, but rather its devastating demonstration of still-formidable power to crush resistance and reshape regional realities at will.
This brutal reality check demands we confront uncomfortable truths about global power dynamics and the effectiveness of current resistance strategies. The celebrated BRICS alliance, far from being the anti-imperial bulwark many hoped for, reveals itself as merely an economic partnership lacking the ideological coherence and revolutionary commitment that once characterized the Soviet bloc. While Russia and China posture on the global stage, their unwillingness to meaningfully challenge Western actions in West Asia exposes the limitations of purely economic alternatives to imperial power.
The contrast is stark. While resistance forces carefully calibrate their actions to minimize civilian casualties, Western military operations deliberately target civilian infrastructure, hospitals, and non-combatant populations while raping and torturing innocent men, women and children in captivity. This asymmetry of moral restraint, while admirable, has become a strategic weakness. The resistance's adherence to international law and humanitarian principles, while ethically sound, has proven tactically devastating against an adversary willing to employ any level of violence to achieve its aims.
Victory Requires Total Sacrifice
Yemen stands alone today as an exception to this pattern, earning its position as the vanguard of resistance. Unlike other forces that hedge their bets and calculate political costs, Yemen's resistance demonstrates the total commitment necessary to effectively challenge empire. This commitment comes at an enormous price, but it also reveals what genuine resistance requires - a willingness to risk everything in opposition to imperial dominance.
History offers rare but powerful precedents in the Algerian and Haitian revolutions, where peoples demonstrated this absolute commitment to freedom, accepting devastating sacrifices and, through their unwavering resolve, achieved the seemingly impossible - total victory against imperial powers.
The North Korea Model Shatters the Normalization Paradigm
History delivers its lessons with merciless clarity. Syria's collapse didn't come at the height of its resistance, but rather when Assad attempted compromise with Western powers and their Gulf proxies. This tragic pattern echoes Libya's fate - Gaddafi's regime crumbled not during its years of defiance, but after abandoning its nuclear program and seeking reconciliation with the West. These cases illustrate what Kissinger cynically but accurately observed: "To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal."
The contrast with North Korea's survival is telling. Despite intense Western pressure, its uncompromising stance coupled with nuclear deterrence has proven effective. This stark reality suggests that in a world still dominated by imperial power, the only language truly respected is that of force. The West's diplomatic overtures often prove to be poison chalices, leading to destruction rather than salvation.
Gaza Exposes Humanity’s Painful Lack of Resolve
Perhaps most disturbing is what Gaza's devastation reveals about the limitations of humanitarian concern and international solidarity. Millions watch a genocide unfold in real-time on their phones, yet continue their daily routines uninterrupted. The much-celebrated international solidarity movement, while morally significant, has failed to materially affect Western support for Israel's genocide. Weekend protests, however large, cannot seriously challenge state policies that embrace devastating violence.
This pattern exposes a crucial weakness in contemporary resistance movements - the internal class contradictions within the resistance. Iran exemplifies this dilemma, wrestling with a highly educated population whose material aspirations have been frustrated by sanctions, creating a perpetual tension between resistance and accommodation. The pro-Western middle classes within these societies, benefiting from connections to global capital and indoctrinated by liberal media networks, become internal advocates for surrender disguised as "pragmatic" engagement with the West. Despite history proving time and again that the West will never be a friend. Ever.
This reality becomes particularly dangerous as attention turns to Iran. The fantasy that a Trump return might offer opportunities for deal-making ignores the empire's fundamental nature - it seeks submission, not accommodation.
The Ultimate Dilemma: Face Extinction or Pursue Weapons Capable of Ensuring our Extinction.
The BRICS alliance, often celebrated as a counterweight to Western hegemony, reveals itself as fundamentally inadequate to the challenge. Unlike the Soviet Union, which maintained a principled anti-colonial stance and provided material support to liberation movements worldwide, today's Russia and China lack both the ideological commitment and practical willingness to seriously challenge Western imperialism. They offer at best economic alternatives, not the comprehensive support necessary to sustain effective resistance.
In the West itself, the inadequacy of “polite left” strategy - relying on symbolic protest and moral appeal - becomes glaringly apparent against an empire willing to openly and shamelessly support a genocide. As author Dan Kovalik soberly observes when comparing today's opposition to historical resistance movements: what's missing is the level of commitment shown by WWII partisan movements or figures like John Brown - the willingness to fundamentally disrupt the functioning of the state. Current resistance efforts, while well-meaning, barely scratch the surface of what is necessary to challenge imperial power. True challenge to power starts only when millions become genuinely ungovernable.
The implications for states facing Western aggression are clear but daunting. As Libya's fate compared to North Korea's survival demonstrates, nuclear capability may be the only reliable deterrent against imperial aggression. This reality presents a terrible choice for nations seeking to maintain independence from Western domination - face extinction or pursue weapons capable of ensuring our extinction.
What US Decline?
The global left has engaged in wishful thinking about both the decline of American power and the effectiveness of current resistance strategies. The empire's willingness to support unprecedented levels of destruction in Gaza, coupled with its success in orchestrating regime change in Syria, demonstrates that it remains capable of devastating effectiveness when determined to achieve its objectives.
The path forward, while difficult, requires absolute resistance rather than compromise. As Kovalik insists, "For the sake of humanity, this evil must be resisted." However, such resistance must transcend comfortable patterns of protest and symbolic opposition. We are witnessing a genocide in real-time, and history — if we survive — will judge not just the perpetrators but those who claimed to oppose them while failing to mount any effective resistance.
This moment demands more than moral outrage, retweets or theoretical critique. It requires a fundamental reevaluation of resistance strategies and a commitment to action that matches the severity of our circumstances. Without dramatically intensified resistance, we may instead be entering an era of even more brutal imperial dominance. The stakes couldn't be higher - the choice between serious resistance or complicity in our own extinction becomes starker with each passing day.
Make No Mistake, Empire Will Destroy Every Last Living Free Soul
The empire's message is clear: it will destroy whoever and whatever it cannot control. The only question remaining is whether those who claim to oppose it will finally mount resistance equal to the challenge. Anything less is tantamount to acceptance of imperial barbarism.
- Karim
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Excellent. The post Soviet era has allowed the pre colonial era to resurface and remake the world. The ideological commitment to freedom has disappeared and the USA’s atrocious support of apartheid has reappeared unmasked in all its 1960 Congo viciousness inaugurating the era of kleptocracy. Thanks for that Kovalik interview, everyone should watch it. The West consuming middle class as you note in resisting countries is a dagger of the Abrahamic Accords. Algeria and North Korea are models, Haiti is a lesson, in the same boat as Gaza. It’s the Soviet era human rights international law that the US is crushing in Gaza with much of the third world too afraid to back South Africa as they see what’s happening around Hezbollah in Lebanon. Chris Hedges and Caitlin Johnston recent posts paint equally dystopian pictures.