What Neoliberalism Really Was And Why It Is Collapsing And Taking the US Empire Down With it
A Gigantic Gamble Is Coming To An End, Just Like How JD Vance Described
Neoliberalism is not the simple, destructive financialized capitalism you think it is. The world's geopolitics over the last four decades show that it had a bigger objective than it appears to have:
Neoliberalism was an attempt by the US to bring imperialism back and make the entire world into its colony.
In the new imperialism, the US would control the money and the financial system the world used. The rest of the world’s countries would have certain roles to play in the empire:
Most would be resource producers: all African nations, all Middle Eastern nations, Oceania nations, many South American nations, and even Russia.
Some others would produce basic and intermediate manufactured products. A lot of Asian nations, some South American nations, some Mediterranean, even many European nations. China was also to be such a nation.
Very few countries were allowed to produce advanced manufactured products, like Germany, some Scandinavian countries, and, to some extent, Japan and South Korea. Even the Southern European countries were relegated to being mostly tourism economies as ‘lesser colonies’. The UK was an exception. The UK was also going to be part of the US imperial system as the country that controlled certain parts of the financial system, especially the valuables exchange.
The US would be at the top of this imperial system, controlling the world economy and monetizing the entire world’s economic output through the dollar as the reserve currency and the financial transaction systems like SWIFT that the US controlled.
Basically, the entire world’s economic value would flow to the US despite the US was not going to produce anything.
It would be able to print unlimited dollars because every world country would need to buy dollars to engage in international trade. On top of that it would also hold those dollar assets in its hand, ensuring the control of those nations. A system of control that went a long way - if a foreign country is holding your nation’s entire assets, you need to do what that country tells you.
In the long run, the system would allow the US to buy out the entire world. Countries were forced to liberalize their economies and open them to foreign investors, foremost the US. Then the US would start buying out their resources, industries and even land with the dollars it was able to print by controlling the reserve currency and forcing those very countries to use the dollar.
IMF, World Bank and similar organizations acted as the economic hitmen of the new system: They would give loans to the countries on the condition that they privatize their economies and open them up to foreign investors. In almost all cases, the majority of these ‘foreign investors’ magically ended up being American, despite all the talk of ‘free trade and globalization’.
The countries that refused to join this order or defied this it were dealt with harshly. They were pressured diplomatically and economically, and if those did not work, coerced through economic warfare and sanctions. If those also failed, proxy wars or outright bombing and invasions followed.
The first thing that the US and US aligned private interests did in a privatized economy was to buy out that country’s media or create private media companies if they were not present. Then this media would be used to condition the public to do propaganda to propagate the system, especially through the news media. Cultural imperialism which was done by replacing the cultural products of other nations and imposing American ones through control of the media and creative landscape was another tool. Other cultural influences like the French influence were shut out from such countries through the US-backed new governments immediately changing the foreign language education to English and stymieing other cultural influences in favor of the American one, accompanied by changes in the education systems to mirror the American system and values under the guise of ‘reforms’. This ensured that compatible or at least non-threatening generations were raised in such countries within just one or two decades, who were then integrated into the new American imperialist system as an educated workforce.
A perfect imperialist setup, if you will. Not only the US would buy out the entire rest of the world with the money it printed backed by the economic activity of the entire world but also it would propagate its imperial social and cultural hierarchy and control. It looked like nothing could go wrong.
But Then the House of Cards Started Falling One Card at a Time
First, China refused to stay as a low-value manufacturing colony. It started producing increasingly complex products and became a competitor to ‘more privileged colonies’ like the North European ones.
Japan also had done the same, but the US was able to subdue them by forcing on them the ‘Plaza Accords’ that crippled Japan’s economy and made it an actual US fief. Being under actual US occupation, Japan did not have much choice in the matter.
But the US had no means to pressure China. China was not occupied. It had an indigenous establishment that was not compromised by US proxies. Color revolution attempts were made, but they did not work. Every decade China progressed further and became a major competitor. China also started helping other countries to build up their infrastructure and industries, much to the ire of the US.
Then things took a worse turn: the Russian establishment realized their mistake of 1991 and restarted implementing the system they abandoned after seeing China’s success, except through the guise of ‘compatible capitalist oligarchy’ this time. China and Russia have aligned with regional power centers like Brazil and neighbors like India and have started a global movement that later turned into BRICS. What had been a few rebellious colonies before, was now ~80% of the world rejecting the imperialist order and building up their societies to elevate their people.
For a decade or so after the emergence of BRICS and the Global South, there was an uneasy detente while the US and its imperial surrogates tried to figure out how to respond.
The first thing they tried was to use their news and information dominance to subvert politics and even do color revolutions, which produced limited results. The local establishments and movements became too powerful and they also had their own competing outlets that frustrated US propaganda attempts. Even the Internet, which the US banked on so hard was not useful: The information highway worked both ways and the indigenous people were able to frustrate the color revolution propaganda online. Ideas to start censoring the Internet were floated, and some attempts at controlling the narrative were made through social media networks and tech companies that uncannily acted like the agents of the US state, but those were too late and ineffective.
So the US decided to go all postal: First, it would take out Russia, a major geopolitical ally of China. Then it could deal with an isolated China easier, and force it back to being a colony again.
The US pushed the Ukraine War along with a complete economic and political warfare against Russia by using it as a justification. In the process, it confiscated Russia’s dollar assets and other financial assets that were held in the Angloamerican financial institutions.
And That Was the Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back and Brought Down the Entire Empire
The entire Global South was already wary of the US as the US stole the assets of other countries like Venezuela and has been doing similar things to the Global South in smaller disputes, but theft of Russian dollars and Anglo-held assets and the threat of theft against countries that may do business with Russia proved to be the final straw.
The entire world saw that the US could steal your wealth whenever it wanted.
Nobody’s money was safe.
The world reacted by moving to trading in their national currencies or using currencies like Yuan instead. This had a major impact - the now-unused dollars started flowing back to the US, causing inflation.
What did the US do in response?
It doubled down on stealing Russian assets and threatened countries that moved away from the dollar.
Now the US has become a strategic & economic threat to every country. As a result, even its biggest creditors started dumping US assets like treasuries to secure their assets, including China and Japan.
Even further, China is set to create a valuables exchange in Hong Kong to further secure its assets, breaking the dominance of the Anglo exchange in London - an additional blow to the empire.
So in one fell swoop, in a gigantic case of shooting one in the foot, the US pulled out the peg that the entire imperial system was built on: The Dollar.
The result has been catastrophic:
The US has rampant inflation and it cannot print dollars anymore.
Not having inflation-free cash printing means it cannot service its government debt like before. Neither can it sell its bonds to creditors to get them to bail it out like how China did after the 2008 crisis because they are dumping them as the US is now a theft risk.
The US investors are now buying US treasuries by dumping stocks because of higher interest rates, but that creates another problem even as it does not help service debt: The stock market and the entire bloated economy that rode on those bloated valuations are also crashing, impacting the economy further and pushing the US into recession. Layoffs are everywhere, and the 2-3 extremely bloated tech and AI stocks can't carry the weight of the entire US economy, leaving aside that those stocks themselves are intermittently crashing along with other stocks.
The imperial surrogates of the US are also getting dragged down by the crash of the imperial system - the European stocks also suffered along with the US stocks, and Europe is also suffering inflation just like the US as the imperial system crashes down burning. Any country and economy connected to the US system is also on a nose-first dive. Some European establishments like the North European establishment are trying to create a military-industry complex to channel taxpayer money to industries to bail them out, in an ill-advised attempt to salvage the situation while advocating cuts to social services and salaries to do that.
It is glaringly obvious to everyone that the imperial system has collapsed.
The political result of all of this is a change of the ruling elite faction in the US. The Trump faction seems to have acknowledged that the imperial system has failed, as openly stated by JD Vance recently.
Trump administration has a major, very radical plan to change the entire US economy and fix the US debt. In my next piece, I will write about their plan - follow/subscribe to hear when it’s posted.