[themgt]

It's also possible to go too far in the direction of seeing only tactics but never strategy, and taking countries publicly stated goals and motives at face value. Zbigniew Brzezinski was one of our most influential contemporary foreign policy thinkers - here's the NYT reviewing his book 'The Grand Chessboard':

Brzezinski ... describes a very forbidding situation in the years ahead if the United States does not make more permanent the dominance it now has over a vast area of the world. "This huge, oddly shaped Eurasian chessboard -- extending from Lisbon to Vladivostok -- provides the setting for 'the game,'" Brzezinski says. "If the middle space can be drawn increasingly into the expanding orbit of the West (where America preponderates), if the southern region is not subjected to domination by a single player, and if the East is not unified in a manner that prompts the expulsion of America from its offshore bases, America can then be said to prevail. But if the middle space rebuffs the West, becomes an assertive single entity, and either gains control over the South or forms an alliance with the major Eastern actor, then America's primacy in Eurasia shrinks dramatically."[1]

In other words, for the US to continue its unipolar domination requires the lack of cohesive blocs dominated by other great powers. Obviously in this context Brzezinski is alluding to Russia and China in the Eurasian 'chessboard', but the logic is broadly applicable around the globe. There's also a difference between controlling events like a puppeteer pulling strings and the more common scenario where our actions help catalyze events we may not have intended but were nonetheless predictable and seen as not worth the effort or trade-offs to avoid.

[1] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/26/r...

[pram]

Brzezinski is a very good example considering his “Arc of Crisis” strategy was to literally keep the Islamic states on the periphery of the Soviet Union destabilized. Not exactly a conspiracy, actual US policy.

[bnralt]

You seem to be misunderstanding what Brzezinski said to and portray it as having the opposite meaning. The point of the "Arc of Crisis" speech was that the U.S. needed to help _stabilize_ the area, because a destabilized region could fall to the Soviets. This was in response to American concerns that instability in its ally Iran could spill over to other allies as well. Here's an article from the time[1]:

> High‐ranking White House and Defense Department officials argue that other key nations in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, are prone to the same domestic disorders that have struck Iran and that Moscow seems increasingly inclined to exploit these difficulties.

> As a result, while some middle‐level specialists in the State Department caution against exaggerating the impact of the crisis in Iran and complain that the White House is in danger of creating a Vietnam‐type “domino theory,” ‘the Administration is said to be fashioning its policy toward Iran and its neighbors in regional terms, treating the area as “an arc of crisis,” a description used recently by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Mr. Carter's national security assistant.

> In a speech to the Foreign Policy Association last week, Mr. Brzezinski said “the arc of crisis” stretched “along the shores of the Indian Ocean with fragile social and political structures in a region of vital importance to us threatened with fragmentation.”

> “The resulting political chaos,” he added, “could well be filled by elements hostile to our values and sympathetic to our adversaries.”

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1979/01/01/archives/us-reappraises-p...

[frankfrankfrank]

I find it ironic that the very people who dismiss everything they cannot comprehend as “conspiracy theory”, because it does not fit their conditioned frame of mind; are not all that different than the other end of the spectrum that is convinced everything is fake.

It’s similar to how people dismiss that TV (among other things) can be used to brainwash/condition/ manipulate people, while being totally blind to one of the biggest industries in all of humanity exists on that very premise … advertising.

[JKCalhoun]

"I believe everything I see on T.V."

"Everything is a lie."

Both are wrong.

[usrusr]

But when both occur together, they become extremely powerful: once you start buying into "everything is a lie", you are free to pick whatever claim on TV is the most convenient, no matter how much evidence there is for the other side.