This file examines the world through the lens of the biocognitive model of mind, as outlined in my little monograph, Narcisso-Fascism.
There was once a rather pretty girl from a rather well-off family who liked to tell the other children in her class what to do. If any of them objected, she flounced off, saying: “You’re just jealous because I’m so pretty.” As her birthday approached, she told everybody who would be coming and who wouldn’t, but this changed from day to day, depending on who had annoyed her. The lucky ones were told when to arrive and even what to bring for her presents. They were all to take part in a play leading to the opening of the presents. The boys had to dress as trolls while the girls were to be the ugly step-sisters. She would be the fairy princess who was in a sleep and could only be awaked by a kiss from a handsome prince, played by the class handsome boy. When he kissed her, she would wake to see all her presents and it would all be so lovely. She even had a handout of a special version of Happy Birthday they were to sing as she opened her eyes. Every time anybody objected to her plan or even questioned it, they were told they couldn’t come to the party so there.
Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to her that little girls like to dress up for parties, not down, that boys get tired of being called trolls or orcs, and at that age, even handsome boys would rather kiss their dogs than kiss a (shudder) girl. Anyway, the great day arrived and everything was ready (her mother was rather indulgent), she dressed in her gorgeous new fairy costume, her hair done with glittering little stars and even a touch of lipstick, and she waited by the door. To her horror, nobody came. The other children had realised they didn’t need her at all and had organised an outing of their own.
Ahbyo. Or RBIO, if you wish. It stands for Rules-Based International Order, the system that, after the horrors of World War II, the US decided would be best for everybody. Instead of the old system known as Macht hat Recht, Might confers Right, international relations were to be governed by a set of rules that everybody had to obey. The principle was: If we set up a complex system of rules to deal with all contingencies, then we can prevent the frictions that lead to war. At the centre of the new system stood the United Nations governed by its Security Council and surrounded by its agencies: UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Health Organisation, UNESCO, UNICEF, OHCHR, UNHCR, etc. Closely associated but separate were the independent financial bodies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In addition, there have been hundreds of other bodies and agreements such as the EU and its vast bureaucracy, IATA, IAEA, World Trade Organisation, the ICJ and ICC, the Geneva Conventions, Interpol, and so on. A great deal of the pressure to establish these bodies, not to mention the money to run them, has come from the US. At all times and in all ways, standing behind – and constantly interfering in - the UN and the labyrinthine paraphernalia of the rules-based order was the glowering presence of the US and its vast and barely-restrained military, a shape-shifting mix of benevolent donor, banker of last resort, world policeman and avenging angel-cum-executioner.
Many of these bodies incorporate the principles established at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-46. Their goal is to ameliorate the “anarchy” of international relations, to create an ordered space in which peace can prevail. On the face of it, life today should be pretty good, or certainly better than the chaos of the first half of last century. We have communications systems they hadn’t even dreamt of; transport of anything anywhere is a breeze; science roars ahead on all fronts; medicine goes from strength to strength; we grow more than enough food for every mouth on the planet; education is seen as a birthright; industry daily churns out amazing products, on and on. Yet, and despite the best efforts of so many people of good will, peace has not prevailed. Indeed, things seem to be getting worse by the day. In a throw-back to the fifties, people are again talking of nuclear war, while over everything looms the unspeakable horror of climate change causing a science fiction planet. Why? Why has their system of rules failed so spectacularly?
The idea that international relations are fundamentally anarchic comes with a lot of history, so much so that many people believe it is self-evident, only a fool would question it. In particular, US political scientist John Mearsheimer says that the inevitability of international anarchy forces states into a struggle to exert local hegemony to protect their interests. I say Mearsheimer is wrong, he has the bull by the wrong end. As a result, he completely misses the point that his account is descriptive but not explanatory. His starting point is that international affairs are anarchic, he describes it very well, but he does not explain why. Not only does he fail to explain it but as long as he takes anarchy as his starting point, I don’t believe he can.
An explanation moves from the level of the observations to be explained to another, more basic level. I observe that a tree grows. The explanation is the unseen processes of photosynthesis. I see a bird flap its wings and fly. The explanation is the phenomenon of lift generated by air moving over the aerofoils of its flight feathers. I see water boil away. The explanation is that, with heat, the molecules of water gain sufficient momentum to break through surface tension and escape from the pot. OK, today I see that the world is on fire from one end to the other. How come? If we humans are smart enough to invent hypersonic missiles with thermonuclear warheads that can strike within one metre of their target on the far side of the world, why can’t we see that this is not such a good idea, that the money and effort should go into building water supplies for deprived countries? If we’re so smart, how come we’re so unbelievably stupid?
Mearsheimer can’t explain this, he’s stuck at the level of observation. He could do what most people do and say “Oh well, it’s because humans have an inner drive to cause anarchy, a instinctive death wish such as Freud’s Thanatos,” but that explains nothing. It’s only another way of saying the same thing. In order to explain it, we have to see anarchy as the end point, not the starting point: international affairs are anarchic just because all nations are jostling to establish local hegemony. By jostling, shoving, pushing and punching, they create anarchy. There’s no jostling, no anarchy until somebody tries to establish local hegemony, to dominate the neighbours who, naturally enough, resist.
Next question: Why do they jostle? Here, we move from the observation (endless fighting) to the more basic explanatory level: we humans fight to dominate each other because we have a powerful, biologically-based drive which makes this irresistible and, at the same time, gives us the intense need to avoid being dominated. This is not some vague instinct, it is a well-researched, universal biological response to certain environmental stimuli whose hormonal basis is clearly understood. This biological impetus to dominate is inherently destabilising as it is paired with an equal but opposite impetus not to be dominated – the paradox of hierarchy, where the irresistible force meets the immovable object.
These drives are like opposite sides of a coin, you can’t have one without the other, and together, they cause the international anarchy Mearsheimer describes. Biology explains why humans always want more, why they are never satisfied with enough (as distinct from describing that they always want more), and why other people violently resist every attempt to subjugate them. We are hierarchical animals; this is determined by biology; ethical and religious systems may try to control it but the central paradox of hierarchy remains: we love to dominate and crush our neighbours underfoot. The urge to dominate tips into violence with such ease that we can’t resist the temptation yet at the same time, the sense that another person or group is trying to dominate us moves us to resist ferociously. We will always fight to be free because, as a proven matter of biology, subjugation destroys the soul. This is the cause of the anarchy that the rules-based order tries to control.
Over the centuries, we have used religion to try to control the urge to violence but it has never worked and often enough has inflamed matters (Blaise Pascal: Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction). Religion didn’t stop World War II with its limitless horrors so we invented the Rules-Based International Order to try to impose some order on our madness. Actually, the Americans invented it and told everybody what part they had to play in it. Now, eighty years later, the RBIO is breaking down. In reality, it broke down in 1948 and has been on life support ever since; what we’re seeing now through the smoke and dust is the last few blasted pillars slowly crumbling to the ground. A large part of today’s trouble originates in the UN Charter, which says all people have the right to self-determination. Except for those who, in 1948, happened to be coloured and living in the vast and far-flung European empires – those of Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and even Portugal. Those unfortunates had to do as they were told because their imperial masters were needed to bolster the American wall against the rabid Soviet masses who were ready to pour into Western Europe at any moment. That was the story: in fact, the USSR was totally exhausted and probably could not have moved another metre.
Portugal, for example, was needed because the Azores were a vital staging post for US bombers and transports flying to Africa and the Middle East, also because its Atlantic ports were important for the new fleets of nuclear submarines that were being developed. The rest were just needed to provide bases for the US military but if the US had insisted they divest themselves of their colonial possessions, NATO would not have survived its first meeting. In 1942, Churchill had summarized their attitude: “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.” Events, however, proved stronger than Britain’s Bulldog: India, the jewel in her imperial crown, quickly gained independence because the UK was broke and couldn’t stop it happening. Other places weren’t so lucky: French Indochina erupted in a 30 year war of independence, quickly followed by Indonesia trying to throw off the Dutch yoke, and so on. In each case, the US bankrolled the wars of suppression, by cheap loans, by its vast stock of military surplus gear, and its naval and air power, and the rest is history.
Hardly anybody remembers this now but the unspeakable brutality of the failing imperialist order had no end: Vietnam, Algeria, Congo, Kenya, Angola, even tiny East Timor… The point is that the so-called Rules-Based International Order was trashed at the first test. The second test has never gone away: the bloody recolonization of Palestine by Europeans. The indigenous Arabs were never given a chance to say what they want. In 1948, their territory was dismembered and they were “neutralized” in the first of waves of slaughter and ethnic cleansing that, in clear breach of all humanitarian and legal principles, continue to this day. For eighty years, one after the other or half a dozen at a time, the US and its vassal states have pounded, pummeled and smashed their way across the globe, sometimes by invasion, as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and dozens of other nations, or by engineering coups, such as Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Australia (1975), Ukraine (2014) and so many more. A list of countries the US has either invaded or forced changes of government is nearly six pages long (single spaced, 12pt font).
Nobody in the West much cares because hardly anybody knows or, if they do, they believe it was for the very best of motives and they probably deserved it. If the US invades a foreign country, we should clap and cheer but if another country does it, they should burn in hell. When, under considerable pressure, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russia leader Vladimir Putin’s arrest for war crimes, Biden praised it. When warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu and Gen Galant were issued on the grounds of genocide, Biden was “outraged” and pointed out that if anybody attempted to act on them, they would be invaded.
However, there is war and there is war, and the wars people don’t see are as effective but much cheaper in allowing the West to maintain its domination of the world. International finance is the grease that allows economies to thrive and this is wholly controlled by Western interests – acting in their interest. With the dollar as the world reserve currency and as the unit of accounting and exchange for up to 98% or world trade, the US gained what Giscard d'Estaing called an exorbitant privilege. And it made the best of it. For example, as all dollar transfers go through US banks, the US knew at all times exactly what everybody was buying, from whom and for how much. Even if this yielded a benefit of just 0.05% per transfer, with world trade of about $33trillion per year, it quickly adds up. It also meant the US could choke off a country’s trade with just a few keystrokes, which it has done time and time again to its enemy of the month. In particular, holding the reserve currency has made imposing unilateral sanctions a breeze. Russia, for example, has been blanketed with over 17,000 sanctions, including freezing its foreign reserves and imposing near-total trade blockades, in addition to blowing up its Nordstream II pipeline.
In the past, trade blockades were considered an act of war but their sheer profligacy means they are not just losing effect but are starting to backfire. The BRICS+ group of countries are rapidly withdrawing from the dollar system and it should not be long before as much as 70% of world trade is conducted outside the dollar system. However, in the ultimate example of shooting itself in the foot, the US has severely restricted the export of the latest microchip designs and machines to hobble China’s advances in IT. The day after Trump was inaugurated, when he and several multi-billionaire tech CEOs announced their $500billion “Stargate” project, China discreetly released news of a revolutionary AI program that equaled the best the US had on offer, developed at a tiny fraction of the cost of the best American programs, and using inferior microchips. The sanctions forced China to make do, and their success wiped over $1trillion off the market cap of the American “Magnificent Seven” tech companies.
Thus, we see two processes taking place in the world today. The first is the natural result of telling people they can’t come to the party: they make their own. Manifestly, the US and its co-conspirators never thought of this when they embarked on their frenzy of sanctions and trade wars. The thought that somebody, somewhere, could manage quite well without God’s Shining City on the Hill, the fount of all things great and wonderful and so on, simply had not occurred to them. To me, this is racism simpliciter: over and over again, we have been told that the Chinese can only copy things, they can’t possibly have any original thoughts because, well, Chinese. Shockingly, Chinese chip technology is racing ahead and will soon outpace the Western leaders (who are actually Taiwanese anyway). The US, meantime, has grown fat and complacent behind its walls of tariffs and export controls, where companies are more concerned with making money than making progress. China’s open source AI program DeepSeek reputedly cost US$6million to produce, using hired, second grade chips. American high tech CEOs, the Musks and Zuckerbergs and Ellisons and Bezos and all God’s other wondrous gifts to humanity want that much per day before they will even get out of bed. What was that about hares and tortoises? Just as a side-note, the average lifespan of Chinese citizens has surpassed that of the US, despite China spending only a fraction on healthcare. For people who believe they are “The Indispensable Nation,” the worst thing imaginable is to find out they’re very dispensable
In 1978, I went to a conference in Singapore, my first trip to Asia. When I got back, I said to people: “Look out, they’ll own us in 25 years.” Everybody laughed. I said: “Don’t underestimate the Chinese, they’re not stupid.” They laughed harder. Meantime, trussed in sanctions, Russia is roaring ahead, and people should also not underestimate the Slavs. They are very enterprising, determined people who are sick and tired of being treated as, well, slaves (that’s how they got the name). In general, if you want to encourage people to do better, you make life tougher for them, which is exactly what sanctions and trade wars do. And one day, they turn the tables on their persecutors.
The second process leading to death of the RBIO is social media: YouTube, TikTok and everything else, which is giving us the first real-time broadcast genocide in history. Older generations, who rely on mainstream media (MSM) for their carefully-curated news, sit back and watch grimly as the righteous Israeli military flushes out the bestial Hamas rapists and child murderers, before picking up their phones to urge their politicians to support the valiant Israeli democracy as it vanquishes the antisemitic forces of Muslim darkness. Or something. Meantime, younger generations watch their phones in horror as industrial-scale genocide proceeds in carefully-planned and coordinated fashion, white phosphorous and 2000lb blockbuster bombs raining down on schools packed with refugees who have absolutely no aerial defences whatsoever to prevent the ultra-high tech F-35s and attack helicopters leisurely selecting their targets with pinpoint precision. A 2000lb bomb produces a crater 11m (35’) deep and 15m (50’) across, killing everything and pulverizing every building within 150m (170yds). The US has shipped thousands of these to Israel, knowing perfectly well they will immediately be dropped on Gaza.
In the first fifteen months of its reprise of the Holocaust on people who had nothing to do with the first one, Israel dropped 75,000 tons of high explosive on Gaza’s 360 sq km of densely-populated land. 87% of all plant life in Gaza has been destroyed. 95% of all buildings have either been completely flattened or are dangerously uninhabitable. The place is littered with unexploded ordinance and cluster bomblets. Despite anything coming from the West’s propaganda outlets (aka MSM), the death toll in Gaza is well over a quarter of a million, and hundreds of thousands more are on the brink of starvation. Every surviving child in Gaza will be psychologically scarred for life.
This is what the younger generation see, all day, every day. They realise that RBIO was always a lie, just a cloak to conceal the old Macht hat Recht, to fool the gullible, and they no longer believe the lie. For them, what Israeli fascists and their totally corrupt Western supporters are doing in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran and elsewhere, spells the end of the RBIO. It’s gone, done, finished, kaput. If this is all the defenceless can expect from your holy writ, they say, then we’ll leave your party and start our own. Thanks, but we don’t need you.
It’s all because humans like to dominate each other. As the Palestinians show, they will also fight to the bitter end to resist being crushed. All power to them.
Fare Thee Well, Ahbyo.
And good riddance.
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