Essay.The New Great Game Has Begun. It is no longer mere competition — it is real war.

The New Great Game Has BegunThis is the end of the order born from the Second World War.

The New Great Game has begun.

It is no longer mere competition — it is real war.

For the first time in a generation, American policy is defined with absolute clarity regarding what is at stake.What is ending is the Pax Americana, that era in which the United States guaranteed global security… in exchange for seigniorage.

The time of the Pax Americana is over. There is no longer any doubt about it, and there is no point hoping that Trump’s departure or disappearance will halt the movement. The brutal and unscrupulous choices of Trump’s clique were and remain overdetermined at their core. Only the form would have differed under other, more diplomatic presidents and teams; the choice itself is not a choice.It is a necessity, because America has exhausted its credit. In reality, it is objectively insolvent. Under the old order, it would have been forced to default, to humiliate itself by begging.In the old order, America was condemned to a draconian austerity plan, incompatible with its arrogance and its sense of superiority.

For more than fifty years, America has been living on credit. After defaulting in 1971, it exhausted the gold mine — the rich seam that was the dollar’s privilege. Its elites knew the end was near, that they would soon find themselves in a position of extreme weakness, like any ordinary IMF client.

Rather than submit, Trump and his acolytes chose to force the issue, to blow everything up, to turn the world upside down.They chose to anticipate History and to try to capitalize on their still-apparent strengths in order to pull off “a coup” — I mean that in the sense of a bad turn, a kind of hold-up on the wealth of the Rest of the World. And it is well timed, for the bet is still playable.

The United States still possesses many assets, many weapons, and above all, many ways to militarize, to “weaponize,” advantages that in the past were not considered military in nature.

They have militarized the dollar, jurisdictions, exchange rates, and trade. They are now trying to militarize knowledge itself through the race for AI, and so on.

In any order, a considerable amount of investment and energy is stored. Breaking an order, demolishing its structures, releases a force, an energy, and riches that had been accumulated within it.This is precisely what the Trump administration is doing: it is shattering the old order and ensuring that it is the one to extract the embedded wealth.

For decades, America has drawn on its credit and on the capital of trust. It has reached the end of its rope. The true logic now at work is that it is repudiating its debts — both its financial debts and its symbolic and moral debts. All its implicit promises.

Credit was extended to it on the basis of numerous advantages and supposed quid pro quos. Now, like gangsters, the American elites are pulling the rug out from under everyone.

There was a global pact — an inglorious pact of submission, to be sure, but a pact nonetheless. And suddenly they decide to break it. Not through negotiation, so that each party might recover its stakes and move on, but like mafiosi, by sweeping up all the chips and claiming the entire pot.

The mafiosi had granted their protection in exchange for the acceptance of their debts, the forced circulation of their counterfeit currency, and their right to plunder. And now, all at once, they refuse to recognize the rights of others — the rights of their lackeys and their victims — to what they have accumulated.

They want everything: both what they gained in previous exchanges and what their subordinates managed to accumulate thanks to those very exchanges.

The Pax Americana is finished. The strongest power knows it will not remain the strongest for long. In a terrible, primal spasm, it tries to smash the rules of the game in which it was about to become the loser — all in order to remain at the top.

To remain the Master.America now wants to use all the force and all the energy accumulated in every domain to defend its position as Master in the new Great Game.

There were considerable riches and potential energy stored in the old order. The Trump administration has decided to claim them, to extract that wealth for its own benefit. It is making everything it had “given” under the old framework pay dividends — never mind that it may be mistaken, and that it believes it gave something when in reality it had merely plundered the world.The height of it: it wants the riches of African countries so it can continue to supply them with anti-AIDS medication!This is merely one striking example.

Never mind the unbalanced benefits it enjoyed in the past. America wants to extract, to squeeze, to appropriate.The same pattern applies to Europe. America believes it protected Europe for free and therefore claims the right to make it repay, with interest, the costs of that protection. Hence the current pillage.Never mind that the foolish and cowardly Europeans have already paid through their acceptance of a floating dollar issued without limit, through the deficits they absorbed and recycled, through the chips they lost and returned.

Never mind everything America has extracted since the Second World War. None of that matters. Europe must pay at least twice.

And this is the general pattern: the United States has drained global wealth, overexploited the rest of the world — including Chinese labor — and now wants even more.

The real question is this: will the comprador bourgeoisies — especially those of Europe and Asia, who grew fat under the old order — remain complicit with the United States now that the exchange has become even more unequal, now that the vassals are being stripped bare with open cynicism and without scruple?

Will our comprador bourgeoisies remain complicit to the bitter end, or will they experience a national awakening and help their peoples absorb the shock and rebuild what the Masters have destroyed?


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