by Pepe Escobar for Sputnik International
The temptation is irresistible to conceptualize the Clinton Machine’s strategy going into the first US presidential debate; let Donald Trump metastasize into a pretzel. Mission not impossible; in fact, accomplished.
Sniffin’ and slidin’, beepin’ and sippin’, angrily chokin’, even swoopin’ on the mike to choreograph a blow, “Donald” (as addressed by “Secretary Clinton”) fell for every shape and size of bait thrown by a canny, relentlessly focused and rehearsed-to-death, Yale-trained, Lawyerly Mother Superior. Freud, Jung and Lacan must have shed tears of joy in their heavenly pad watching the Ego-unraveling show.
While Secretary Clinton controlled the debate, Donald could not even control his temper; but this being The Donald, it did not prevent him from launching an out of left field self-elegy to his “temperament”.
The latest installment of the longest job interview on the planet, played out in a deep blue stage with white stars featuring an American eagle with an – out of place – olive branch, may have qualified as wild, wacky TV at its apex.
Yet on the Donald front it was mostly painful to watch. Stream of consciousness non-sequiturs ruled, as in, “I have a son who’s 10, he’s so good with computers” – running commentary on US cyber-security vulnerability.
But then, from a global public opinion point of view, there’s geopolitics – something that vastly infantilized swathes of Americans consider at best a big, meaningless word. Yet Secretary Clinton herself was keen to emphasize, “words matter”.
So let’s see how (and if) geopolitical words made sense at the Trump/Hillary cage match.
Trump defuses WWIII
Donald demonized mostly China (on trade) and Iran, while Secretary Clinton forcefully demonized Russia and Iran. North Korea and terrorism were also on the cards; thus both sides amply paid tribute to the Pentagon’s top five 21st century “existential threats” to the American eagle.
Trump’s view of China seems to come from someone reading Sun Tzu on LSD; “You look at what China’s doing to our country in terms of making our product, they’re devaluing their currency and there’s nobody in our government to fight them … They’re using our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China, and many other countries are doing the same thing.”
Beijing is not practicing quantitative easing (QE); actually it’s the US, Japan and Germany who do.
Unfortunately Donald did not elaborate on climate change; a November 7, 2012 Trump tweet ruled that global warming was invented by China to devastate the US manufacturing industry.
On the other hand Trump may have – indirectly – validated China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR), a.k.a. The New Silk Roads, which are all about infrastructure upgrading; “You land at La Guardia, Newark, L.A.X., and you come in from Dubai and Qatar, you come in from China, you see these incredible airports, we’ve become a third-world country.”
Donald blamed Secretary Clinton for turning Iran into a “major power” – a shtick that may have been written by dodgy casino mogul Sheldon Adelson (in the audience, and courted like a monarch). He described the Iran nuclear deal as “one of the worst deals made by any country in history”, insisting “$400 million in cash” were part of the deal, and Hillary’s responsible. Donald knows it because “I met with Bibi Netanyahu the other day”.
China and Iran are related in varying degrees to the New Silk Roads and of course the pivot to Asia, which was first announced by Hillary. So she had to say, “I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them”. Crucial add-on; “Our word is good”. Asians, as demonstrated in the last G20 in China, are not impressed.
On NATO, Trump said the Atlanticist monolith must engage in direct counterterrorism operations in the Middle East. NATO actually has a Defense Against Terrorism program for 12 years now. The problem is the priorities are regime change – from Libya to Syria; keeping the heroin flowing from Afghanistan; and not giving a damn about “moderate rebels”.
Trump did promise to make NATO follow the money: “They have to understand I’m a business person”. Allies “are not paying their fair share.”
Secretary Clinton went no holds barred emphasizing Trump has been “praiseworthy of Vladimir Putin”. Trump: “Wrong”. He could have qualified, if he was not sniffin’ so hard; in a March 20 debate, Trump said, “Putin is a strong leader, absolutely. He is a strong leader. Now I don’t say that in a good or bad way. I say it as a fact.”
It went virtually unnoticed. But Trump, in one sentence, actually may have ruled out WWIII if he becomes President; “I would certainly not do first-strike” – as in the official US doctrine, reiterated by Obama, that guarantees a US first nuclear strike. Secretary Clinton did not comment.
I want my Pyongyang Tower
Donald seems to have found a solution to North Korea; “You look at North Korea, we’re doing nothing there. China should solve that problem for us. China should go into North Korea. China is totally powerful as it relates to North Korea.” Crucial add-on; Iran also “has power over North Korea”.
Now imagine a three-way summit involving Xi Jinping, Ayatollah Khamenei and Kim Jong-un debating Trump’s deal, which might throw in a Trump Hotel and Casino Pyongyang for good measure.
Secretary Clinton was adamant that “Donald supported the invasion of Iraq.” Trump: “Wrong”. Actually, right; he did, already in 2002. But
“that is a mainstream media nonsense put out by her!”
Donald was adamant that “President Obama and Secretary Clinton created a vacuum for ISIS.” Actually, Hillary might have been “fighting ISIS your entire adult life”. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has not briefed Donald properly; he meant al-Qaeda in Iraq – which sprang up as a direct consequence of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished”. Its spin-off, ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, fully emerged only in 2014, when Hillary was already out as Secretary of State. So Donald was not able to explain how the emergence of ISIS was a willful decision taken by official Washington.
It was on the theme of cyber-attacks on the US that Secretary Clinton finally managed to – subtly – conflate the Pentagon’s three “existential threats” who happen to be closely involved in Eurasia integration; Russia, China and Iran.
Expanding in one sweep from cyberspace to Full Spectrum Dominance, she said, “whether it’s Russia, China, Iran, or anybody else, the United States has much greater capacity. And we are not going to sit idly by and permit state actors to go after our information, our private sector information or our public sector information.”
Donald stressed, “whether [the DNC hack] was Russia, whether that was China, whether that was another country, we don’t know”. Technically correct. That did not prevent Secretary Clinton from doubling down; “I was so shocked when Donald publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans. That is just unacceptable.”
Highway to Hell
So, in a nutshell, Donald may have landed only two good blows; on NAFTA and dodgy trade deals, an on the absolute mess in the Middle East exacerbated by Obama/Clinton. Nothing though on the Clinton Foundation – which benefits handsomely from Persian Gulf direct/indirect supporters of Salafi-jihadism.
In the end, do all these words matter, as Hillary herself stressed? Hardly. An alleged victory by knock down in the first debate may be just a blip in the race. Secretary Clinton won’t conquer new votes beyond the “basket of deplorables” spectrum as much as Donald won’t conquer new votes among white-collar whites.
We might as well have seen the sanctimonious Lawyerly Mother Superior expelling the sniffin’ and slidin’, rantin’ and whinin’ billionaire schoolboy bully from class – to some variant of highway to hell. But next time he won’t be so easily pretzelled out. In this most irrational of political contests, stream of consciousness may even have the last word; “I have better judgment than she does…There’s no question about that. I also have a much better temperament than she has, you know? I have a much better – she spent – let me tell you – she spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising – you know, they get Madison Avenue into a room, they put names – oh, temperament, let’s go after – I think my strongest asset, maybe by far, is my temperament. I have a winning temperament. I know how to win. She does not have a…”
here an reasonable attempt to deal with Trump and Clinton and the deep state.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.de/2016/09/why-deep-state-is-dumping-hillary.html
In his graphic of the deep state one can enter the supposed actual position of the current beast. Generally I share the attempt.
Hugh Smith has never been consistently pro-Trump enough to be taken seriously.
His summary of the Clinton years completely ignores the significance of the Kosovo War, that more or less launched this era’s regime-change wars.
“…Though Clinton reportedly hankered for a great crisis he could exploit to burnish his place in the history books, alas none arose, and the 20th century ended with a decided absence of existential threats to the U.S. or even U.S. interests.”
Another miss is calling Hilary ‘status quo’; she’s not. She would be the consolidation of globalist neocon power over the local Deep State.
” When we speak of the Deep State, this ruling Elite is generally assumed to be monolithic: of one mind, so to speak, unified in worldview, strategy and goals.
In my view, this is an over-simplification of a constantly shifting battleground of paradigms and political power between a number of factions and alliances within the Deep State. Disagreements are not publicized, of course, but they become apparent years after the conflict was resolved, usually by one faction winning the hearts and minds of decision-makers or consolidating the Deep State’s group-think around their worldview and strategy.”
Its true the U.S. Deep State is not a monolith and has competing domestic factions, but atop the nationalists are the true globalists. Status quo was the U.S. nationalist Deep State using the globalist neocons to advance and consolidate its own power, not the U.S. nationalist Deep State being unsurped of the war machine it built for itself.
To me it was all an act. It’s a duopoly, Pepe. He threw the fight. Not that it matters. He could have won and the result would have been the same.
Sorry to be so jaded. There is hope, however. No regime lasts forever, and this one is fading fast. I just hope it ends not with a bang but a wimper. That would be the most patriotic thing either one of these people could do for those who come after.
Trump is only in the race because he is the only one that Clinton can beat and at least make it look like it was some kind of contest, and even he is having a hard time loosing ground to her. Whether the sociopathic narcissist or the sociopathic narcissist warmonger wins does not matter either one will be a complete and utter disaster for the ordinary people of this world.
The debate was a warm up in which lasting impressions are difficult to predict. By simple arithmetic regarding the statements made one might add up a plus minus unclear tally that favors Clinton. But simple arithmetic is dysfunctional when it comes to tallying the impact of the show on feelings and attitudes among swing voters, and also which specific points have endurance and growth potential.
I had the impression that the moderator was biased against Trump, and that his tax returns, the Birther issue, and whether he as a private person he was against the attack on Iraq in 2002, 2003 or later, all smell of trivial pursuits meant to focus on Trumps pimples. Meanwhile Clinton’s various malignancies were off topic. Thus, Trump appeared victimized and may have garnered sympathy points.
Clinton also seemed scripted, and seemed to be reading stuff, which doesn’t leave a good impression.
Clinton came across like the practised politician that she is, and Trump as frumpled real political rookie. So I would say, on the basis of the first ‘debate’, people who want real change are still going to tend to gravitate to Trump. and those who like the way things are, are going to favour Clinton.
There was something super creepy about her continuous smile. Very strange looking. Also she didn’t behave like she usually does. Either they had her on some damn good drugs or it wasn’t her at all. Not even a hint of a health problem. Bizarre
Of course damn good drugs… but one can’t rule out faking out Trump by exaggerating her weakness. Her alertness seems to have caught him off guard at the debate.
Many pundits felt the best thing for Hilary to do was shut up and let Trump hang himself with his own mouth. Being sick kept her in the news without having to do very much while avoiding press conferences. A strong debate performance would then alleviate most doubts. Many women would sympathize with her.
Hilary’s not the best electioneering strategist; neither herself or her team have enough real empathy for that, but good enough to make even a real health problem work for her.
Wonderful analysis! I missed the first debate, I will not miss any of the next four.
“Beijing is not practicing quantitative easing (QE); actually it’s the US, Japan and Germany who do.”
The U.S./China gambit requires collusion between both countries.
1) A predatory lender/hedge fund approaches American Captains of industry and tells them they will be green-mailed if they don’t move their industry to China. This involves taking all the assets of a company, including their pension funds, and re-hypothecating them on a double entry ledger at Wall Street Bank. Carl Ichan is a notorious raider of this type. This sort of behavior got turbo charged with overturn of Glass Steagall by Clinton’s Graham Leach Blily act. Yes, a loan can be made against assets that you don’t own; the future promise of owning them is good enough.
2) Wall Street funds the move of jobs and industry to China, recalcitrant American companies are bought out.
3) Wall Street can then take wage arbitrage on former american made products exported back to the U.S. Wage arbitrage is the difference in wages between China and U.S. and most importantly includes exchange rate.
4) China helps the gambit along by creating new loans in their State Banks to target strategic industry they want, for example Solar Cell technology.
5) China’s new Yuans enter their money supply to then exchange for dollars held by exporting manufactures. These new Yuans are necessary as the Chinese economy is expanding. New yuans directly enter economy in proportion to growth, thus price is not effected.
6) China recycles their dollars to buy U.S. TBills
7) Buying of the TBills holds bond price high, which makes U.S. interest rates low. Bond price high, dollar perceived value high, then exchange rate high. This then perpetuates the gambit. Dollars now enter U.S. economy to then buy more Chinese goods.
8) China price to the U.S. is just under the American price, to thus put American main street out of work.
9) Skiff bribe is paid to dock workers to keep them quiet. Skim bribe is paid to retailers to place Chinese goods on retail shelf’s. Wall Street takes the remaining as arbitrage.
10) For a time wall street is a hero, but later main street becomes a zero. The ability of American labor to make goods as prices has been short circuited. Say’s law is no longer operative.
____________
Both China Gambit and QE hold bond prices high, which artificially makes the dollar exchange rate high. This can go on as long as foreigners recycle their excess dollars to buy TBills, in what is known as the TBILL world economy.
QE dollars are not entering the real (main street) economy, they tend to get trapped in an upper loop of wall street Casino finance, where they trade as finance paper for paper. Or, QE Dollars get trapped in bank reserve loops, where FED now pays interest, to thus prevent a rate collapse to zero on overnight market. Hence banks are becoming capitalized with QE.
China is a mercantile exporter, whose self interest is to gain manufacturing know how, and to go from third world country to first world in a generation or so.
China gambit is working, and wall street finance Oligarchy is in collusion.
Good post. It seems to me that by replacing Industrial Capitalism with Finance Capitalism, the global oligarchy have avoided a crisis of overproduction and declining profits. However, Finance Capitalism produces no real wealth. The process you describe above merely redistributes existing wealth from the working classes to the oligarchs. This process self-terminates when the working classes are impoverished and profitability of markets stagnates and falls.
By encouraging increased sovereign, personal and corporate debt levels this process can be prolonged to an extent. Mathematically, though, debt levels can grow exponentially but the ability to service debt as well as availability of real assets to collateralize debt cannot. These mechanisms become overwhelmed eventually, inevitably leading to increasing instability in global financial markets.
Personally, I don’t see a way out of this for the bankers.
On China, your remarks above may indicate a problem for them. By integrating the Chinese economy into the Global Order, per its assigned role as a source of cheap labor, the Chinese elite classes have been rewarded with considerable wealth. However, the price for this is that China needs to give up nationalist aspirations. Nationalism is considered obsolete by the Globalists.
“Beijing is not practicing quantitative easing (QE); actually it’s the US, Japan and Germany who do.”
I’m a china fan too, but sorry, Trump’s remarks about China are correct. They did obtain a trade advantage by currency manipulation, as they kept their RMB pegged to USD.
Not sure what you mean about Germany manipulating their currency? Are you talking about the ECB?
I thought Donald Trump made some smart comments about the economy. He also made good remarks about interest rates and taxes. He ‘s a business man and it shows.
China pegs their exchange rate through the buying and selling of TBills as well as the buying and selling of currency.
Keeping Yuan low in exchange rate allows wage arbitrage for Wall Street, and also allows the patrimony of the West to monetized for today. Hard won invention and ingenuity is sold for cheap by finance masters, disenfranchising generations of American labor from what their forefathers created.
QE is only one mechanism: there are many predatory rent schemes, as greed knows no bounds.
Keynes was right, his bancor system would have prevented exchange rate manipulations.
Way to go Mefobills!
(Although I’m not sure Bancor/International Clearing Union is a more efficient way to regulate international trade than say a gold standard with it’s own clearing house.)
When push comes to shove these two wannabes serve the same master: the Fed.
Both will do what they are told to do or they will end up like JFK.
This whole affair is just one nasty affair to delude the US public that they have a say in the affairs of state.
The truth is they never have and they never will.
Never say “never”.
When, in the aggregate, the US public is more interested in affairs of the nation than balls going through hoops or over goal lines, the public IQ might double from 40 to about 80.
I don’t think that might happen due to a sudden and drastic “deflate-gate” of air release from a basket-ball or football, but it theoretically could happen as a result of such a release of air from the US Dollar.
Too little too late, no doubt, but at least the debates would be less stupid.
Candidates, even if they are any good, really are massively constrained by the dumbed down public IQ. Just ask Adlai Stevenson.
But I’m optimistic because I am still savoring a Winton Churchill quote I just read tonight. Though I detest him, I like the quote: “Success in life consists in going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.”
Meanwhile preparations for WWIII are becoming urgent.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-northkorea-thaad-idUSKCN11X2KO
The United States will speed up deployment of the THAAD anti-missile system to South Korea given the pace of North Korea’s missile tests, and it will be stationed there “as soon as possible,” the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia said on Tuesday.
Pepe blew it on AQ/ISIS. Clinton started the destabilization of Syria while she was in office. The absence of Syrian troops in the east, as they defended elsewhere, allowed ISIS to form and strengthen. ISIS was first in a weakened Syria and then crossed to Iraq.
While Clinton won the debate on points, Trump won the election as he showed he was not scary, but safe. He crossed over the bar that had been raised.
Yeah, Scott Adams has been accurately calling the rise of Trump. Being not scary is overplayed; important, but not the one thing.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/151007796236/i-score-the-first-debate
Trump needs to be seen as competent as well as not scary. In fact scary is good when the badass is working for you.
Incompetent is never good except in the case of President Dubya Bush for whom stupidity covered for evil, an abuse of Hanlon’s Razor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor#Origins_and_etymology
The American people had enough of that. Gary Johnson has been playing stupid for media attention like asking “What’s Aleppo?”, but Trump has no media attention deficit to overcome and his great challenge is to appear competent and presidential.
Towards the end of the debate Trump said stamina was the most important quality a President needed; a shot at Hilary’s health problems.
However, the debate made Hilary’s health problems yesterday’s news as she didn’t pass out, cough, or go crosseyed as popularly expected. If all Trump had to do was not be scary, all Hilary had to do was remaining standing and appear alert.
Americans can maybe handle a scary Trump, but not an incompetent Trump.
He passed up a lot of easy non-scary shots that prove competence save for pointing out once that Hilary’s experience was bad experience, a theme that should have been maintained short of anything that could be construed as belittling women’s intelligence generally.
Trump should have said, “Stamina and the ability to make great deals for America”. Hilary hasn’t made a good deal for America, ever.
Forgot to put my name on the link to the Reuters report on THAAD being placed in SK as a matter of urgency.
I often think of Hollande and Australian PM Turnbull being called into the whitehouse when they were going against US policy and what caused them to toe the US line. Blackmail? Personal threats? Or being told that US plans for war with Russia/China were so far advanced as to be unstoppable?
The last seems the more likely reason for being called into the whitehouse
Two things — sniffling and running out of gas at the end — could lead one to believe that nose candy might have been imbibed.
Clinton didn’t have a coughing fit or freeze up and fall over. That was her goal for the first debate. She made it. She looks very ill at best.
Trump didn’t bring up a lot as there are 2 more debates to go. This was just warming up.
The moderator asked no questions about Bengazi, her health, The Clinton Foundation pay to play, her “super-predator” remarks about blacks as First Lady, and only asked a softball on email.
Expect more from Trump closer to election date in debates 2 & 3. Standard strategy, start calm and save the heavy ammo for closer to the election so people will remember it on election day.
Anonymous you are spot on.
+1
thanks Pepe, I didn’t actually see the debate, so that’s given me a bit of a picture, and his strong support base is the mid States and they are all like that.
American democracy is the moral and political equivalent of two maniacs locked in an insane asylum ranting at each other.
What is most insane, however, is how many brainwashed dupes … I mean Amurican voters actually place their faith in this perverse political bread and circuses, and actually support either one of these wackjobs.
Democrat vs. Republican
Clinton vs. Trump
Psychopath vs Sociopath
The American Fourth Reich is showing its depraved nature to the entire world through these “presidential debates.”
This is nature of the American Empire and its next War-Criminal-in-Chief–whomever it may be.
The “No first nuking” comment strikes me as the most important issue in this whole charade. So, I gotta go for the Trumpster over the NeoCon warmonger.
That otherwise winning comment is balanced off by not pointing out more clearly and immediately that Hilary is a warmonger who gets into unwinnable wars.
Trump could have done much better, and never said he “agrees with her” in that context of nuclear weapons because he needed to emphasize he was more competent, with different ideas on first use. Trump needs to work to ensure what he says really sticks as sounding like what he seems to want to say.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-trump-clinton-presidential-debate-complete-transcript/5548151
I only caught the tail end, which I found very telling. The question was asked would the losing candidate support the winner. Given the presumably serious differences between the two candidates, a principled answer would have been–and in fact is what happens anyway with Republican obstructionism a constant with Democrat presidents and weak kneed democratic opposition to Republican presidents’ policies–that the policies recommended by either one would have to be opposed, since they are so disastrous. Trump answered the question by talking again about the serious problems facing the country, and his last sentence was that he would definitely support the winner, Clinton if she won. Thus, Trump gave the same answer that the disingenuous Bernie Sanders gave. His campaigning for Clinton was a total downer for the movement that he seemed to want to create. So if Trump lost, would he pack up and go back to business, or would he continue his opposition to Clinton’s disastrous policies, especially towards Russia?
As for Clinton, true thief that she is, finished the debate by saying (I am paraphrasing), that everyone must take the election seriously, since of course it is a true reflection of the People’s will. So which is it….credible election or the Russians are going to hack the election (certainly Hillary would never do such a thing!) And her last words were to the effect that this really matters. What she did was to plagiarize Jill Stein, who has said that people need to take the democratic process seriously, because it really does matter.
She virtually stole her closing statement from Jill Stein of the Green Party, whom she conspired to exclude from the debates, and who, had Stein been in the debates would have trounced anyone, Trump, Clinton or Johnson. Which of course is why Stein was excluded.
So that is how absurd things have become. Trump echoes Sanders capitulation in advance, and Clinton uses Stein’s very words to advance her position. If Clinton had an ounce of sincerity in her body, she would have adopted Jill Stein’s positions for real. But of course expecting anything but prevarication, manipulation and sociopathy from Clinton is wishful thinking.
It should be noted that one of Stein’s main planks is cutting the military budget by 50% and closing most if not all foreign bases. Where is Stein’s support in the Russophilic community? I haven’t heard a word. And yes, with nuclear war a plausible outcome after a probable Clinton election, a major push from a moribund USA peace movement is long overdue.
Farcical though it may seem, this is the most important American election since the Revolution of 1800.
Then, populist Thomas Jefferson, defamed as a drunkard and enemy of religion even though he wasn’t (Trump is accused of being a fanatically politically incorrect cocaine user) took down statist James Madison, accused of being a monarchist, which he sort of was (Hilary is a Deep Statist globalist through-and-through).
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=2978
http://www.weeklystandard.com/return-to-monarchy/article/2004366
Its very peculiar that the patriotic factions aren’t hyping this; they seem to be being led to want revolution-as-coup not revolution-by-election.
Still, the parallels are remarkable as its again statist militarism and banksterism versus liberty and enlightened civility.
Since Pepe mentioned climate change ……
I am a scientist and have been researching the many aspects of climate change for years:
grouped mainly under global warming, pollution, and radiation.
That the globe is warming is irrefutable, and accelerating. Civilization is a heat engine
pure and simple. And, even if the heat engine was turned off tomorrow, global
temperatures would continue rising above levels ever experienced by homo
sapiens on planet Earth.
The “Masters of the Universe” know all about abrupt climate change, of course,
although Hillary and Donald may not, or even Obama for that matter. One thing
for sure, front row seats at “The Last Picture Show” will be brutally expensive.
The question is how to refute the deniers. They don’t believe the science because it’s being delivered by the same mainstream channels that spread propaganda about the health of the economy, Russia, Syria, the Clinton Foundation, etc.
In this situation, appeals to reason don’t work because they require evidence and the deniers reject that as doctored. It really seems to be more an issue of debating than science per se.
Never let a good crisis go to waste. Climate change has been weaponized. Gwynne Dyer has written a book about it, but at the time (2010) things were much more optimistic.
http://gwynnedyer.com/radio/
https://letterpile.com/books/Climate-Wars-A-Review
Its not clear that either Trump or Hilary really grasp the enormity of climate change and its causes and consequences, but its not required for reading a teleprompter prepared by those who do.
The decision to weaponize was apparent in the renewal of the Pentagon ‘seven in five’ plan (2001) long after its timetable should have expired (2006), stalled out in Iraq. Then the Arab Spring and Libyan regime change happened in 2011. The decision was to embrace the violence inevitable with climate change. Some might say it was inevitable, since U.S./Western crony capitalism thrives reliably on war.
http://www.salon.com/2007/10/12/wesley_clark/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-america-needs-war/5328631
Britain going for Brexit is a good indicator that ‘lifeboat Britain’ is a go,
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/4qu4br/brexit_is_the_start_of_lifeboat_britain/
AFRICOM may be a long-term investment not only in African oil and water, but the return of the Green Sahara in a hundred years as global warming pulls the African moonsoons north.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
The present crisis with war refugees in Europe seems to be a test for what is to come; upwards of a billion climate change refugees in a worst case scenario.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/11/climate-refugees-151125093146088.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/03/150302-syria-war-climate-change-drought/
Kind of puts an old Madeleine Albright quote in a new light:
“But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”
Madeleine Albright, stated on NBC’s Today Show (February 19, 1998)