Russia and China Are No Longer the Scary Ones—We Are.

The End of Order: From Cold War Rules to Systemic Chaos

The Cold War had rules. Its logic was brutal but coherent - containment, deterrence, symmetry of force, plausible diplomacy in public, real negotiations in private. There were boundaries, even if violated. Today, there are none. What has replaced that order is not multipolarity, but a form of chaos marketed as freedom. And at the center of that chaos stands the United States, no longer the guarantor of stability but the principal agent of systemic disruption.

American foreign policy no longer follows interests. It follows cycles of internal decay projected outward as strategy. Military deployments substitute for domestic cohesion. Sanctions replace diplomacy not because they work, but because they can be implemented without legislative consensus. Alliances are no longer formed - they are coerced. Loyalty is not rewarded, only extracted. This is not a failing empire. It is a self-aware machine that burns allies, civilians, and laws at the same temperature.

Ukraine and the Architecture of Destabilization

Ukraine did not become a battlefield by accident. It was pushed there - gradually, deliberately, and cynically. The so-called Euro-Atlantic project did not expand eastward for security. It expanded for leverage. In 1990, assurances were given to Gorbachev that NATO would not push past Germany. Those assurances were not simply ignored - they were systematically reversed.

Each NATO enlargement phase was treated in Washington not as a diplomatic risk, but as territorial gain. When the Bucharest Summit in 2008 named Ukraine and Georgia as future NATO members, it was not a gesture. It was the moment the post-Cold War order was abandoned. The war that followed was not Russia’s provocation. It was the inevitable consequence of the Western refusal to listen, even to itself.

By 2014, the internal politics of Ukraine had become disposable. What began as a protest over corruption was operationalized by American intelligence into a controlled demolition of a sitting government. Victoria Nuland’s leaked calls were not rogue diplomacy. They were evidence of pre-selection. The installation of a client regime aligned with Western financial and military institutions was not democratic emergence. It was regime replication. Azov*, Aidar* (banned in Russia), Right Sector - none of these groups emerged in isolation. They were armed, funded, and integrated under NATO mentorship while the Western media performed a sleight of hand, branding open fascism as “national defense.”

This was not support for freedom. It was the transformation of a buffer state into a weapons platform. What followed was eight years of unacknowledged war, NATO ISR support in Donbas, covert operations run through “civil society” fronts, and the expansion of the SBU as a Western-aligned internal intelligence force. By the time Russia moved in 2022, Washington had already pre-written the script - one in which every act of restraint was erased, and every escalation pre-justified. The battlefield was not Ukraine. It was a memory.

Weaponized Economics and Manufactured Crises

This pattern is not new. From Yugoslavia to Syria to Libya, the American approach to foreign conflict follows a clear architecture: de-legitimize, fracture, arm proxies, destroy, and exit. Reconstruction is never attempted. Stability is never permitted. Every operation is treated as a tactical win, even when the state collapses. This is not an empire in the traditional sense. This is permanent destabilization as an instrument of policy. What failed in Vietnam has been perfected through media control and proxy formalization. Civilian casualties are no longer recorded, only processed. Victory is not measured in outcomes, only in contracts.

But perhaps the most corrosive export of U.S. foreign policy is not weapons, nor ideology, nor financial leverage - but refugees. American-sponsored destabilization campaigns in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan created displacement on a scale unmatched since World War II. This was not collateral fallout. It was structural. A deliberately unmanaged flow of millions into Europe fractured social cohesion, overran border systems, and seeded the rise of reactionary populist movements across the EU. It was not just the physical burden of resettlement - it was the political volatility it enabled.

By creating the crisis and then refusing responsibility for its consequences, the U.S. positioned itself as both arsonist and supplier. Refugee flows destabilized moderate European parties, accelerated nationalist insurgencies, and opened space for the kind of economic kleptocracy already normalized in Washington. Trumpism was not an anomaly. It was a model. The ultimate aim was not to absorb the displaced - but to collapse Europe’s political center, privatize its crisis response, and prepare the continent for decades of extractive partnership under the illusion of restored sovereignty.

The World Adjusts to an Unpredictable Power

The American model of warfare is now ambient. It does not require deployment. It requires narrative. Financial systems are weaponized not to punish combatants, but to threaten independent alignment. The dollar is not currency - it is permission. When Russia was removed from SWIFT, when Iran’s reserves were frozen, when Venezuela’s assets were looted - all of it signalled the same principle: sovereignty is conditional, and America is the condition. Even allies recognize this. Compliance is no longer based on shared interest but on fear of exclusion. Trade with the wrong partner, purchase weapons from the wrong vendor, and a nation will find itself under slow-motion siege. This is not diplomacy. It is hostage economics.

Meanwhile, American institutions implode behind the facade of constitutional decorum. Legislative function has collapsed into public theatrics. Executive power is now primarily military. The intelligence community operates without oversight, protected by classification and enforced amnesia. The electoral process remains a ritual, but its outcomes are contained within a narrow range of donor-approved actors. No war ends. No budget shrinks. No scandal brings accountability. The state no longer serves the citizen - it serves continuity.

And yet, it continues to speak in the voice of moral authority. It speaks of human rights while shielding client regimes that conduct mass civilian bombings. It speaks of sovereignty while maintaining over 750 overseas bases. It speaks of law while threatening international courts for investigating war crimes. The contradiction is no longer hidden. It is the doctrine. To speak in contradiction is to assert dominance. This is not hypocrisy. It is strategic impunity.

Russia and China are feared for strength. The United States is feared for collapse. Not economic collapse, but procedural collapse - collapse of coherence, of memory, of control. It is no longer a rational actor. It is an actor of reflex, wounded pride, and unmanageable machinery. No one knows what it will do, not even its leadership. It is a war state that cannot function without enemies and has begun producing them domestically. What was once containment abroad is now internalized as division. Foreign policy is now only projection.

In this context, Moscow is not seen as a global threat. It is seen as a state reasserting boundaries that Washington eroded. China is not feared for ideology - it has none. It is feared for capacity because capacity cannot be destabilized without consequence. The multipolar world is not emerging out of idealism. It is emerging out of necessity - a shield against unreliability dressed as order.

The world has changed. And with it, the masks have dropped. The boogeyman does not speak Russian. It does not wear a red star. It wears a lapel pin. It arrives on private jets. It uses satellite time to guide artillery strikes on partner states and then calls it “defense.”

This is the inversion. America is not feared because it is wrong. It is feared because no one can stop it - even from itself. It acts not to win, but to prevent others from winning. Its power is no longer stabilizing, only punishing. Its leadership is not strategic, only performative. Its alliances are not partnerships, only dependencies.

And so the world adjusts. Quietly. Systematically. Parallel currencies. Alternative platforms. Trade corridors without conditions. Legal structures that bypass the State Department. Media environments that resist coordinated silence. The shift is not coming. It is already here.

History may not judge America for how it wielded power. It may judge it for how it ended - with no enemies left to fight, and no allies left to trust.

Gordon Duff is a former UN diplomat having served in the Middle East and Africa, a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted governments challenged by security issues. Courtesy

https://journal-neo.su/2025/05/31/america-the-new-boogeyman/