The Setting of the American Star: Fact or Political Maneuver?

Has America’s role started to decline? It is a question that has begun, during the last few months, to impose itself more and more on Middle Eastern and international arenas. The main cause for this question is the United States’ visible retreat on a global scale, which is reflected in the comprehensive changes that have occurred in its strategy. These changes, in turn, reflect a clear deficiency in this great empire’s politics and performance on an international level.

Despite the sharp turn of American policy toward an obvious retreat from a role that, until recently, the country aspired to play on a global level, there are still people who see this retreat into the background as nothing more than a strategic maneuver. This maneuver would aim, first and foremost, at allowing America to reconsider its plans and perspectives in the Middle East, which were muddled by the consequences of the foreign wars it launched under false pretenses and deceptive slogans like “anti-terrorism” and “defending freedom, democracy and human rights.” These wars have, in one way or another, exhausted, weakened and critically wounded America. Consequently, it is now suffering from the worst economic, political and moral crisis, both domestically and internationally, that it has ever experienced.

This hypothesis states that America is composing itself and focusing on treating the wounds and scars it has received as a result of its foolish global policy. If we believe that America was in fact forced to change its policy due to the huge number of failures and defeats — in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and all other corners of the world — that have struck the empire in recent years, then this hypothesis may be correct.

That policy put America on the edge of a chasm. What we are seeing on the ground today is merely the implementation of the new policy, under which America is entering a period of hiding to recuperate, forced on it by those failures and defeats that encompass it from every direction. This is what explains and justifies America’s lack of physical presence in many of the warzones that have ignited on their own accord. Having delegated this issue to its allies and human instruments around world, America is now content to manage these wars, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, through an operations order that issues commands and controls those instruments from a distance. This is what is now known as a “proxy war policy.” Such a policy keeps one of the main parties in a conflict away from the battlefield while its agents fight in its place. This preserves the dignity and strength of that party or, if it is weak or exhausted, allows it to repair itself and recharge its batteries so that it can return to the battlefield in a bloodier and more ferocious manner.

The proxy war policy the United States is pursuing also takes into account the potential results and repercussions of those wars; if they end in defeat, then it can keep its distance, to some extent, from the repercussions and thereby safeguard its power and soldiers. This also allows it to protect its image, which has been tarnished in the eyes of the populations both within America and around the world. Whoever is content to wage these wars on behalf of America and under its patronage will receive a shock that may, in many cases, take his life. Perhaps what is occurring today in Syria depicts, to a large extent, the current American policy of waging proxy wars.

That hypothesis might be realistic and correct; however, if we delve deeper into our analysis of America’s behavior during the last decade, adding in the string of economic, social and moral crises that are still raging within it, then we might arrive at a different conclusion, which seems to contradict the facts visible on the surface. All analyses and opinions that stem from the lessons of history and the way things tend to develop converge on this alternative conclusion. Such considerations confirm that the United States has entered the phase of natural, traditional decline that came upon every previous empire that has existed over the course of history. Additionally, any preliminary or superficial diagnosis of all of America’s behavioral trends during the last few years confirms that they are merely symptoms of the empire’s decline and fall, which may come about quicker than some expected. Perhaps the events and developments that have afflicted the United States over the last decade confirm the truth and seriousness of this diagnosis.

The United States began its false war on terror more than a decade ago after the events of Sept. 11. It fabricated these events as a justification to begin its attack on the world. Nonetheless, after all these years, the countries that believed in and rallied behind the war, whose glossy slogans killed millions of innocent people around the world, have discovered that they are its greatest victims. Despite the killing, the beast of terrorism that America still claims to be fighting has increased in size and spread beyond comprehensible limits. This is thanks to the latter’s foolish policies that, while publicly claiming to fight terrorism, are secretly feeding it.

Without a doubt the succession of events and changes that are raging inside many Middle Eastern countries today clearly reflect the failure and defeat of the Zionist-American and Western project. Consequently, they also reflect the birth of a new era that, with new political equations and a new balance of power, is governed by new principles. These principles are based, first and foremost, on the logic of justice and the protection of human rights.