Fadi Lama discusses his book Why the West Can’t Win: From Bretton Woods to a Multipolar World. Lama’s thesis is that the West, dominated by private central bankers a.k.a. “the Money Power,” has met its match in the form of the RIC (Russia-Iran-China) de facto alliance. Whereas the Money Power Empire uses slogans like liberalism and democracy to disguise its efforts to construct a one-world totalitarian plutocracy, the RIC axis supports multipolar civilizational sovereignty including the preservation of traditional collective values that bind together religions, nations, and families. According to Lama, world power trends favor RIC, which has been making rapid economic, technological, and military gains, even as the Money Power Empire loses control over energy resources.
Dr. Fadi Lama is an International Adviser for the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). He is a consultant in the fields of geoeconomics, industry, SMEs and academia. Fadi received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, an MSc in Manufacturing Technology from The City University of London, and his BE in Mechanical Engineering from the American University of Beirut.
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Excerpts:
Kevin Barrett: And your book does make it clear how the change in the military technology that Andrei Martinov has written about is so relevant to the fact that today the BRICS countries or the RIC, the Russia-Iran-China axis that you write about, are able to now challenge the US economically (thanks to their military power). Because we're moving into a stage of military parity, and maybe beyond parity.
Fadi Lama: Tell me, what's the real balance of military power now? What parity? Economic parity or military parity?
Well, I was saying we're moving into the era of military parity. Where we are in that process, I don't know.
Military parity? That disappeared a long time ago. Now, there is no parity at all. The power of the RIC (Russia-Iran-China) is much greater. I will take a quote from—I think it was Larry Johnson, who stated that the US is waging war similar to having an army of cavalry in World War II.
Let me put across some important facts people are not aware of. As you have noticed in the book, everything has at least two references that corroborate it. So, regarding US Army ground forces, these were finished, obliterated, in Iraq. Most people are not aware that the U.S. Army had more casualties in Iraq than in the Vietnam War. They give you the number, this funny number of whatever it is. The actual number was, until the end of March, more than the Vietnam War.
What was done was like creative accounting. How do you define that in the theater?
Like in Vietnam, if you went to Vietnam and you died, you were considered to be a casualty of the war. In the war on Iraq and Afghanistan, they made the definition “dead in the theater” and “dead not in the theater.” What's the dead in the theater? I gave this example many times… And the missile comes in at me and I'm pulverized. There's nothing to pick up. All the other nine are dead. Somebody's head is falling off. Another is cut into three parts or whatever the ambulance comes and picks all these parts—the helicopter ambulance or whatever, all these that were picked up are not considered dead in the theater. They died while not deployed (but rather, supposedly during evacuation or hospitalization).
Another totally different angle that corroborates this is a conference that was held in the Kennedy School in Harvard about the cost ofthe Iraq and Afghanistan war. And there they cite that total number of rotated service men and women was something like 2.5 million. And those service men and women who had compensation claims due to injury were about 1.25 million, or half the total. Now calculate the deaths. One quarter…if you even, if you go to one tenth, that's 125,000.
So the the the army the ground forces were obliterated. Hence Obama came up with this innovative doctrine of “leading from behind.” (Hiring mercenaries and terrorists and client states and generally using proxies. -KB) So the ground forces are gone. What do you have left? The Navy. The Navy is used to project power.
After the January hit of Ain al-Assad base (Iran’s retaliation for the American assassination of General Soleimani) I show in the book the image analysis (of Iran’s bulls-eye missile strikes). And this meant that aircraft carriers were transformed from a platform for projecting power into a platform with hostages. The analysis is detailed in the book.
So if an empire cannot project power, it's no longer an empire.
In the 1990s they lost Venezuela, which was under their control. Russia's oil was with the oligarchs, under their control. Of the top four, only Iran was not in their control. Today, of the top four, only Saudi Arabia, number four, is mostly under their control.
As you point out, Saudi Arabia is becoming less willing to obey every order they get from the empire.
First they entered this proxy war against Yemen and they lost. And they found that these weapons systems and support they are getting from the US and the UK was useless. They lost against the Ansar Allah in Yemen, which goes again to prove that the whole Western military doctrine is obsolete.
Yeah, Yemen is certainly performing above expectations, isn't it?
Not really. If you follow reality, not really. But if you go by the propaganda, you know the hype. The US Navy has a budget of around $335 billion, the Navy. The estimated GDP of Yemen is $25 billion. Peanuts! And that’s Yemen’s GDP, not the Yemen Navy. Yemen’s Navy, I don't know, it could be billion. I have no idea.
And if you read the literature of the US Navy, “we maintain the sea lanes of communication.” What? They couldn't control the Red Sea, which has, I think, I don't know, 40% of the global traffic. Against who? AnsarUllah. Why? The Americans have, let's say, a very powerful bow and arrow. The other guy has a machine gun. The bow and arrow has become obsolete.
And their missile defense is—first, it's not effective. Two, it's very costly. Three, they don't have the production capacity for an intense missile defense. One French frigate, I think, they ran out of missile defense and they just left. “It's too dangerous for us here.”
And the US, UK navies cannot maintain the sea lane and sea traffic in the Red Sea versus who? Ansar Allah.
Hezbollah now… for example, the hubris that they are going to attack Lebanon. Okay. I'm in Lebanon. Now we laugh when we hear that they want to attack. Who's going to attack? Israel, the United States. We really laugh. You know, what do they have? The U.S. has an aircraft carrier. At the beginning of the Gaza War, they had this thing about an aircraft carrier coming to the Mediterranean Sea. Then it hid behind Cyprus so as not to be in the range of Hezbollah missiles.
Hezbollah now has a vastly larger missile arsenal than it had in when it essentially defeated Israel in 2006. And that leads to the question of why the Israelis keep saying that they're planning to attack Lebanon, but they keep putting it off.
When they say they are going to attack Lebanon, the first reaction is laughter, like I'm laughing now. This is the first reaction.
The second, I can assure you, is that the majority wish that they would attack Lebanon. Okay. Because this struggle, which started in the 19th century and which has totally destroyed the lives and the development of the whole region. You can go from Morocco to Pakistan, it all has been affected by the insistence of creating this settler colony in the Levant.
So, this is the big showdown. The resistance axis…because in Islam, there is no such thing called collateral damage. In the Quran, if you kill an innocent life, it is like you have killed all humanity. So this concept of collateral damage doesn't exist. And if you notice, in the war between Hezbollah and Israel, or even between the Palestinian resistance in Gaza and Israel now, Israel’s casualties are military, ten military to one civilian. But on the other side, whether it's the US or Israel or whatever Western country, they will inflict ten times times or a hundred times more civilian than military casualties.
So despite the fact that the resistance axis has the capability to remove and terminate this settler colony (it doesn’t for humanitarian reasons). And Alistair Crook has been explaining this for years. He calls it the red pill option. They will not embark on a major war because it will necessarily involve thousands of civilian casualties.
So they cannot start a war. You perhaps understand. Most people do not understand. Most people know Sayyid Hassan Nusrallah. All over the world they know. But they do not understand that this guy and all the overwhelming majority of the Hezbollah or Ansar Allah or Iranians or whatever, they consider that this very short life is an infinitesimal period during which they are sitting for an exam. And what really counts is Judgment Day. They are working for Judgment Day.
Put this in a Western mind. They cannot understand that this guy, his life is just a test for standing in front of God and Judgment Day and having a clean slate.
I think some Westerners can still vaguely relate to that in terms of both their own religious heritage that is mostly eroded away, but also in terms of the just kind of basic human intuition. I mean, before I came to Islam and before I even had any truck with the notion of God, I think I still had just a hint of that knowledge that in some sense, we are going to be judged for what we do in this life.
Yeah, of course. And now there is a revival of spirituality and Christian values in the West which is very good, but the fact is, when the Israeli or the American…When they try to analyze, the (resistance) guy states it very clearly, that judgment, but they cannot internalize it.
So this is really what keeps the big war from taking place. If Israel attacks, it’s real war. I mean real war. Now there are, if you want to call them, serious skirmishes, but it's not a real war like they're doing on Gaza. If they do a real war, then it may be considered that from a religious standpoint that Hezbollah can enter into a full war.
“If you want the big war, we will have the big war.”
Fadi Lama on “Why the West Can’t Win”