The following article, datelined today, appears in the Sept. 11 issue of the daily Il Fatto Quotidiano. The author has authorized EIR and the Schiller Institute to publish an English translation of it.
From the Twin Towers to Kabul: How the Empire Collapsed (https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/in-edicola/articoli/2021/09/10/dalle-torri-gemelle-a-kabul-cosi-e-crollato-limpero-usa/6316380/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=commenti&utm_term=2021-09-10)
September 11 and the United States: From World Government to Mafioso Extortion
by Pino Arlacchi
The coincidence between the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and the 20th anniversary of September 11 suggests that a cycle has ended. Many identify it as the cycle of the American empire.
U.S. hegemony over the “free world” was established after 1945 and was based on an offer of protection from the main external threat, the expansionism of the U.S.S.R. The threat was conspicuously inflated, and only served to legitimize the claim of an American world government. But the U.S. offer ended up being accepted because in Europe the Soviet danger gradually became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It matters little that Russian rearmament was an effect and not a cause of the Cold War. Anyone on the continent who found themselves within range of Soviet missiles ended up willingly joining the proposed protection of the Stars and Stripes. Uncle Sam’s protection was legitimized.
The situation began to change with the defeat in Vietnam, but the radical turning point was the sudden collapse of communism in 1989. A serious problem then emerged. With the disappearance of the Great Enemy, how can we justify the continuation of American protection, and of the power bloc it gave birth to, that is, the military-industrial-political complex that today is called the “Deep State"?
From 1989 to September 11, 2001, the world government and the deep state went through a crisis of survival. It was clear that sooner or later, once the epochal opponent was defeated, the moment of truth about cutting military spending would come.
