I've read several news stories talking about the CIA's attempts at negotiations with the Israeli government, parallel with the US State Department's incredibly brazen charades, lies, coverups, and stonewalling. I've heard a couple times that the CIA has been actually attempting to move things back toward the status quo.
Now I see they've trotted out Obama's CIA director to go on CBS Sunday Morning to talk about Israel's terror attacks on Lebanon and directly call it terrorism. That's got to be coordinated with the current agency, and comes across as very intentional signaling. Matthew Miller is basically acting like nothing happened, while the CIA is publicly calling Israel a terrorist state.
My question is why? What are their incentives here? Are these stories just PR bullshit by the CIA? What does the CIA stand to lose in an all-out regional war, that makes them willing to go around the President and apparently make the only real efforts to negotiate?
We already know there are “realist” factions within the CIA and the Deep State who think the empire has over-stretched itself, so this is not at all surprising.
However, in my opinion the realist faction is also fundamentally incorrect with trying to steer the US towards competing with China on industrial terms. There is simply no way (and too late) for the US to re-industrialize itself, not only because Wall Street finance capital already has a death grip on the US economy, but also because the US simply does not have the productive capacity to catch up to China’s industrial and technological growth. The war is already lost before it has begun.
The neocons, on the other hand, are playing the correct strategy by fully leaning into the only weapon that the US has left - financial warfare. The best hope the empire can slow its own decline and threaten to bring the whole world down with it if they don’t submit to its demand is to go full landlord mode, using its vast control of the global market and global capital flows to blackmail the world’s economies. And if worst comes to worst, threaten to reset the slate with nukes. The only way out of this is mass de-dollarization, and that requires the Global South to understand what’s at stake and willing to do the necessary sacrifice.
In any case, this is simply how historical forces interact. Finance capital (represented by the US) and industrial capital (represented by China) will eventually have to come to a blow. There may be some people who try to delay it, but the tide of History does not care. This is Marxist materialist logic in action. It is as natural as air molecules flowing through temperature and pressure zones. The best we can do is to use these knowledge to prepare for what’s to come for the future, and pray that the world doesn’t blow itself up in the process.
That makes a lot of sense. Supplying Ukraine is a strain on US war production, but doable. Ignite one or two more wars, and we actually have to start letting "allies" fall