Should the imperialists invade Bangladesh, they'll destroy all of this progress, like they destroyed the material gains made by Gaddafi when they bombed Libya in 2011. And this invasion, as well as the numerous other invasions the Pentagon's report implies will occur, is going to be doubly destructive, as the imperialists explicitly plan to exploit the climate crisis in order to intervene. This is what they've done in Syria; the terrorists Washington backed there wouldn't have succeeded at instigating a civil war if not for the drought within the country that global warming exacerbated.
As the years go on, and as the climate gets more destabilized, the imperialists will further employ this tactic of taking advantage of crises to start their wars. The Syria operation even created a model for these future wars to follow: back terrorists, use the environmental crises to ignite internal conflict, demonize the government as a human-rights abuser for responding to the terrorism, and intervene with military involvement and sanctions. Plus support ethnic separatists like the Rojavans, who've been facilitating the U.S. military's illegal extraction of northeastern Syria's oil.
So far, this model has run up against limitations. Since the imperialists began employing it to try to break up Ethiopia, their backing of Tigrayan terrorists, disinformation campaigns against the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments, and sanctions haven't destroyed Ethiopia's BRI gains. Which could be a sign that the imperialists will fail there, considering how inadequately the Syria model has succeeded in Syria itself. Washington remains unable to overthrow Ba'athism in Syria, allowing the country to keep rebuilding the schools, electrical grids, roads, and other essential services that the destabilization scheme laid waste to. As Modern Diplomacy assesses, this allows Washington's rivals to grow their influence in Syria and other parts of the region:
We find that Sino-Syrian cooperation extends to joint security and diplomatic fields. China has stood by Syria in the Security Council, and China has not hesitated to (use its veto several times with Russia to support the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad). Beijing is also coordinating with Damascus in the field of (fighting extremism and eliminating terrorism and its extensions inside China in the Xinjiang region, especially after the participation of more than five thousand Uyghur Muslim fighters in the Syrian war alongside ISIS). Here, the Chinese and Russian influence in Syria and the expulsion of the United States of America from it paves the way for activating the (Iranian plan to establish a corridor to the Mediterranean through Syrian ports), and emphasizing the importance of this Iranian corridor to the Chinese Silk Road Initiative, especially as it passes through Syria, Iraq and Iran. Therefore, the Chinese interest in developing the Syrian railways and ports comes as a prelude to linking them with regional neighboring countries, such as: (Lebanon, Iraq and Iran), which (contributes to reconstruction and economic development).
Even Erdogan's Turkey, a reactionary regime that's a member of NATO, has been participating in this undoing of the damage Washington has done to Syria. It's been liberating Syrians from the threat of torture at the hands of the Rojavans, and it's been rebuilding the country's roads. As a consequence, Erdogan has joined Putin, Kim, Xi, Maduro, Ortega, Assad, and Lukashenko as one of the vilified leaders within the imperialist media. Erdogan is still an anti-democratic figure, but he's one who's forsaken blind loyalty to the U.S. out of rational self-interest amid rising multipolarity. That's how much the world has changed since the peak of U.S. power.
A never-ending war
In this environment, where neo-colonial regimes and even some imperialist powers keep behaving inconsistently with Washington's preferences, the U.S. empire has turned to perpetual war as its means for self-preservation. Throughout the last two decades of imperial decline, there's been a correlation between the shrinking of U.S. hegemony and the cementing of the perpetual-war paradigm.
Prior to 9/11, Washington's aggressions had been continuous in terms of underhanded warfare, with the operations against Yugoslavia and Iraq filling the conflict lull following the Gulf War. But it was after the empire reacted to 9/11 by plunging into a new military quagmire in Afghanistan that the current paradigm began. A paradigm where U.S. wars - despite never being officially declared, as has been the case since World War II - have taken the form of direct combat for twenty unbroken years.
This is different from the empire's relationship with war throughout the mid-twentieth century. Now the wars never end, and therefore entail an ever-increasing military budget that's made U.S. social services exceptionally poor even compared to the other imperialist countries. Now the ruling class can't afford to allow lulls in the periods of conflict, because capital has come to depend on the military-industrial complex more than ever. And now the wars need to be continuous in order to hold back the tipping of the balance that capital depends on. To keep profits up enough for the system to stay intact. It's a delicate arrangement, one that will be broken if the empire loses its present series of battles to sabotage the BRI.
As Moscow-based analyst Andrew Korybko observes about what's at stake in the hybrid war on Ethiopia:
Ethiopia is successfully resisting the U.S. hybrid war against it... The American Hybrid War on Ethiopia will likely continue since the US doesn't like to lose. It keenly understands what's at stake in the realm of international perceptions, and it's that the US cannot afford to have an African country - let alone one as large and influential as Ethiopia is - successfully resist its pressure campaign. Ethiopia's resolute resistance can inspire other countries across the Global South, which can complicate the US' efforts to pressure them into curtailing ties with China in the New Cold War. Had the US simply accepted Ethiopia's balancing act, then the conflict might have ended by now, but its zero-sum policies prevented that.
Why will the imperialists never let the wars end? Because the exploited countries have the economic leverage to deprive the exploiter countries of what's needed to make imperialism work, and China is giving them an avenue for exercising that power. They're the factor that could bring down the U.S. empire, and therefore the ability for capitalism to continue functioning in its current stage of crisis.
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