Gef 87: Through the Looking-Glass, and What we Find There

What would you say if you learnt that Gibraltar is of the national security interest for the United Kingdom, while it is not of the national security of Spain? What would you think if you read that France could not feel secure if Russia occupied Latvia, but Russia should feel secure if Ukraine is a member of NATO? What would your reaction be if you were told that Turkey needs to control Lebanon or else Ankara will feel insecure? Don’t such claims sound absurd?

And yet that’s what the United States is not ashamed of proclaiming, namely, that without having control over Taiwan it is going to feel threatened by China.

What would you say if you read that Denmark is surprised by the fact that Germany’s army is much more numerous? What would you think if you were told that Bulgaria points to the numerical superiority of Turkey’s troops? Are these facts strange, given that the population of Germany or Turkey is much larger than that of Denmark or Bulgaria? Yet, that’s what surprises serious American political and military analysts who point to the large size of the army of the Middle Kingdom as if the size of China’s population were no factor in it at all.

Such are some of the statements that you can find while reading yet another treatise issued by the notorious Research And Development (RAND) think-tank, a treatise that Gefira 87 has delved into. This many-pages boring document echoes the same claims that Washington has been repeating for decades. Nothing new in terms of American take on the world, but a fascinating insight into the psyche of the world’s hegemon, the hegemon who is not ashamed of proclaiming to the whole globe that he is entitled to exercise the exclusive right to rule it over, to boss it over, and to bully others if they happen to hold a different opinion. An insight into a narcissist’s soul, a soul of the narcissist who has accustomed himself to playing the main role and cannot bear other protagonists anywhere in sight; a narcissist who is ready to set the world ablaze in order to maintain its dominant position.