 When will foreign leaders start asking to speak to America's real government? During the furor over Nancy Pelosi's incendiary Taiwan visit last week I was watching an appearance by anti-war as Dave DeKamp on the show Rising Which brought up the under discussed point that US officials going to Taipei is actually a continuation of a trend that had already begun happening under the Trump administration DeKamp pointed out that China began regularly flying planes into Taiwan's air defense identification zone after Trump administration officials made similar visits to Pelosi's That started happening regularly after August 2020 when President Trump sent Alex Azar to Taiwan DeKamp said He was his health secretary. He was the highest level cabinet official to visit Taiwan since 1979 The following month in September 2020. They sent Keith crack He was the undersecretary for economics in the State Department, and he was the highest level State Department official to visit Taiwan since 1979 So these are unprecedented steps and since then we've seen more Chinese military activity in the region Later in the interview rising's Breonna Joy Gray asked DeKamp if these escalations against China from the Trump administration into the Biden administration were a quote kind of blob foreign policy decision that is not partisan DeKamp explained how in 2018 the US military began officially transitioning from emphasis on counterterrorism in the Middle East Toward great power competition with China and Russia with the ultimate target being China If you look at all the really hawkish think tanks in Washington that are funded by the arms industry It's all about this so-called great power competition DeKamp said Russia right now seems to be the more imminent issue, I guess but China seems to be in the long run and we've seen this from just about every government agency the Pentagon the FBI the State Department the CIA say that China is the long-term so-called threat and We've seen Biden say this and this is kind of the name of the game in Washington right now in the lead up to Pelosi's visit moon of Alabama spotlighted this strange phenomenon Where US foreign policy moves along the same trajectory regardless of political party or election results with a collection of recent articles That have all raised this subject independently This one from naked capitalism stands out the most right now quote National leaders never have complete freedom to act even autocrats have constituencies or power blocks they have to appease In the US it has become clear that the president has limited degrees of freedom on foreign policy matters The military intelligence interests call the shots mind you There are factions so a president can push the needle to a degree That's why for instance Obama was able to check Clinton's plans to escalate in Syria But the flip side is that presidents who want to improve relations with pet enemies get nowhere in In the Oliver Stone interviews Putin recounts how he had productive discussions with Bush and they agreed on concrete de-escalation measures Follow-ups were unanswered Eventually Putin got a written baffle speak climbed down That and other examples led to Putin concluding that US presidents are hostage to bureaucratic and commercial interests Biden is a very weak president and it appears that that has enabled the neocons to have an even bigger say over foreign policy than usual One assumes Xi has to understand that Yet the Chinese readout has Xi starting from lofty first principles to contend that the US and China as leading world powers have a duty to promote peace global development and prosperity From that Xi reasons that seeing China as a strategic rival is misperceiving US-China relations and misleading the world community Who is Xi talking to when he goes on like that? It certainly isn't Biden and quote an example of the aforementioned comments by Putin was when Oliver Stone asked him You've gone through four US presidents Clinton Bush Obama and now Trump. What changes? Almost nothing your bureaucracy is very strong and it is that bureaucracy that rules the world Putin replied It's that bureaucracy that is responsible for the fact that the US centralized empire continues to move in the same way Along the same trajectory regardless of political parties and election results Nobody elects that bureaucracy You can't even see most of it behind the veils of government and corporate secrecy You can study at your whole life and at best you'll come away with a list of opaque government agencies long-time military and intelligence operatives plutocrats corporations banks war profiteers think tanks lobbying firms and NGOs With ties to different nations and governments around the world But exactly who is responsible for what specific decisions behind each specific move of the empire will remain shrouded in mystery to you It's just a jumble of names and words with no useful application Westerners are fond of crowing about the freedom they have to criticize their president or prime minister in whatever way they want Saying that if you tried to criticize the leadership of one of the foreign regimes We are all trained to hate you would be thrown in jail for it Depending on the nation that may be true But is it really freedom to be able to criticize an elected official who is nothing more than a figurehead? Sure, you can criticize the president all you want You can stick googly eyes on a sock and criticize that all you want to it'll make the same amount of difference At least people who live under more overtly authoritarian governments know who rules over them and who's calling the shots in That sense they have more freedom than us As an Australian I know I live in a member state of the US centralized Empire, which is functionally just a US military base with kangaroos But I can't see who's making the actual decisions about how the Empire will act how capitalism will move and Whether my children will be conscripted into the military to fight some idiotic war with China provoked over Taiwan or the Solomon Islands If I were Chinese I would know exactly who is ultimately responsible for making the important decisions about economics and foreign policy in my country But as an Australian I don't get to know those things The truth is Westerners live in a giant Empire loosely centralized around the United States whose operations they have literally no influence over Whose operators they don't even get to know and whose mechanisms are entirely hidden If you call that freedom I call you a fool We can see that the Empire moves the same way on important matters regardless of who we elect by simple naked eye Observation of the Empire's behaviors from year to year We can also see it in the fact that the official leader of the most powerful government on earth is obviously suffering from some kind of Dementia and is clearly not the one calling the shots All this makes me wonder At what point will foreign leaders begin demanding to speak with those who are calling the shots? At what point do Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping begin saying no, we're not doing another fake phone call with America's fake government Put me in touch with the actual people who are responsible for the issues. I am concerned about Who is making the actual decisions on these specific matters? Let me talk to them I demand to speak to your real government