There are reports that DOGE is going global as the tech industry and other oligarchs the world over use their politicians to reframe austerity and privatization through the lens of innovation. Countries like Germany, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India either already have their iteration of DOGE or are looking at creating it. Musk, the world’s richest man and libertarian weirdo at the center of DOGE has also cultivated close ties with governments in Hungary, Italy, Israel, and is inserting himself along with the US government into the politics of South Africa, Brazil, and other nations.
The conservative-DOGE-tech alliance might put up the appearance of opposition to the grating virtue signaling of the liberal Davos cabal, but they’re two sides of the same coin. Samuel Huntington, who came up with the label “Davos man”, argues that members of this global elite “have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations”.
As the dust settles on Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, there are arguments that this plan has little to do with boosting American manufacturing and more with extorting better deals for US-based oligarchs in the neoliberal trade model, hurting China, and “shock therapy on a civilizational scale.” The administration is reportedly already in negotiations with countries like India, Israel, and Vietnam over “deals.” Maybe nowhere are the administration’s intentions more clear than in the fact that hours before the announced tariffs Trump and Musk gutted the program that aids American manufacturers.
We’ll see where “Liberation Day” leads, but if DOGE marks the next stage of global neoliberalism (according to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, the future belongs to authoritarian capitalism), it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the world is embracing DOGE much the same way it did when US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher legitimized neoliberalism nearly a half century ago.
As DOGE helps reconcile US elites, can it also lead the march towards what Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says is a future belonging to authoritarian capitalism across the world?
Exploitative Success Stories
Any regular reader of this site will need no reminder of how decades of neoliberalism has shredded the American social fabric. We can list almost infinite economic statistics, but maybe nowhere is it more evident in Americans’ increasing belief that they don’t belong, that they have no community, and there are no values holding the country together. That’s unsurprising when anything and everything is justified in pursuit of the almighty dollar and “learn to code and/or move” is the credo of the party that used to at least feign representation of the working class.
On the bright side, a lack of community is easily exploitable. And all the social harm goes hand in hand with obscene benefits for the wealthiest. That is the great selling point among the global elite as they’re called who do seem to have a strong sense of community.
Part of the ineffectiveness in countering them is the identity politics that has infected the politics at the same time of neoliberalism’s explosion.
Consider the following article I came across recently: “Split Apart: How Unchecked Capitalism and Integration Divided the ADOS Community.” It’s from Lineage First Magazine and is co-written by AI, but it describes how the civil rights era opened doors to advancement but that predatory capitalism fostered the exploitation of the marginalized while enriching a few.
Essentially, a small percentage of African Americans were allowed to enjoy the riches of American capitalism while the rest continue to toil in poverty, and the US called it a success and a day. This isn’t too dissimilar to the “success” story Vice President JD Vance peddles about his rise from poor white Appalachia.
In many ways these American rags to riches stories are reminiscent of US imperial strategy as DOGE goes global. Europe is a fine example with its overreliance on the US and seemingly limitless number of compradores in leadership positions.
They all seem to know that even if they lay waste to Europe, they can follow in the path of former World Economic Forum Young Leader, British Prime Minister, and war criminal Tony Blair. After he left government he began “operating a dizzying, and often overlapping, web of charities, firms, and foundations that have catapulted him to the status of one of Britain’s wealthiest people .”
He travels around giving interviews warning against the dangers of populism and free public services – a task that is no doubt more difficult with Jeffrey Epstein’s “Lolita Express” no longer offering him free rides.
There are plenty of other examples of EU officials following in Blair’s footsteps.
Former EU Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton quickly became an advisor at Bank of America, getting a waiver to bypass a rule that requires a two-year waiting period before starting lobbying jobs. David Cameron recently joined Jeb Bush’s private equity firm.
Zelensky and company in Ukraine are maybe the best case study, however. Here is Dmitri Kovalevich writing at Al Mayadeen:
The Ukrainian political elite has always been famous for its skills in mimicry. Many started out as Soviet functionaries, then became pro-Russian politicians. Today, most are flirting with far-right Ukrainian nationalism and neo-Nazism. More than coincidentally, Zelensky is a mimic and comedian by profession. The dictionary definition explains that “a comedian is someone who entertains audiences using many techniques, one of which is mimicry and impression.”
Ukrainian publicist Serhiy Datsyuk says the Ukrainian elite has done nothing but plunder the country’s people and resources for the past 30 years, and Ukrainians are beginning to recognize this across the board. He writes, “It is very difficult to destroy half of the country’s population in 30 years, but we managed. This shows that we Ukrainians don’t need Ukraine, and therefore no one else needs it, either. Our elite has robbed the country of resources and infrastructure and did not give a damn about the people.” In his opinion, it is pointless to ‘save’ Ukraine under Western tutelage because the country is in freefall and there is nothing left to save in such a format. The creation of external enemies, that is, the ‘Russians’, has been just another excuse for the authorities to relieve themselves of responsibility.
In January, a statement by Vitaliy Portnikov, a well-known Ukrainian journalist and a columnist of the US-funded Radio Liberty, emphasized the class division of society which has only intensified during the war. His words resonated widely in Ukrainian society. According to him, the very essence of a Western-inspired ‘democratic’ society is that the poor should perish while the rich should prosper.
Despite her disastrous time in office, German Foreign Minister and coincidentally another former WEF Young Leader like Blair, Annalena Baerbock still provided one of the finest summaries when she explained why she doesn’t listen to Germans’ concerns over job losses or freezing. Her real concern is Ukraine by which she means those looking to profit off the slaughter.
With elites like this, what’s to prevent the duplication of Ukraine elsewhere? Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics in Moscow writes the following:
Sending Ukrainian cannon fodder to slaughter, they are preparing a new one—Eastern Europeans from a number of Balkan states, Romania and Poland. They have begun to deploy mobile bases, where contingents of potential landsknechts are trained. They will try to continue the war not only to the “last Ukrainian”, but soon to the “last Eastern European”
Why might the Russians want a “deal” even though they’re winning in Ukraine? The prospect of many more years fighting to subdue Eastern Europe (again) could be one reason.
There are potentially others.
Dystopian Multipolarity
Russia is not fighting for much of a different vision of societal organization, nor is China. As Michael Hudson has explained time and again, the true battle being waged is between financial oligarchy on behalf of the Davos crowd and a mixed public-private economy in places like Russia, China, and elsewhere in the global south. In simple terms, they are what the US was before the neoliberal revolution, but Hudson also recently commented on The Duran on how neoliberalism is what’s taught at Chinese universities and is conquering the world.
Do Russia and China simply want to build up their countries using mixed economies like the US did in order to settle into a seat equal to Washington at the global neoliberal table?
Fiorella Isabel, Vanessa Beeley, and others are contemplating how a Russia-US detente will herald a new carving up and exploitation of West Asia while cementing some of Greater Israel’s designs on the region. China, by most accounts, is in the lead in the race to replace human labor. And both countries purchase and use Israeli surveillance and population control tech. As Antony Loewenstein documents in his book The Palestine Laboratory, companies like Any Vision developed a system for mass surveillance of Palestinians, and now operates in over 40 countries, including Russia, China, and the US.
To be fair, China and Russia are more willing to play by international rules, are agreement-capable, and currently fear tearing their social fabric apart — all statements that cannot be made about the US.
China isn’t afraid to cut oligarchs down to size, although for what reasons isn’t exactly always clear. In Russia, Putin recently announced healthcare for the homeless. The US appeals to greed and has no concern for any potential destabilization that impoverishing country will create.
But while the opposition to American hegemony and win-win deals championed by Moscow and Beijing are welcome, they are often for the elites of countries and not necessarily workers or for the environment. Both China and Russia are seeing rising levels of economic inequality.
So what is the fighting with Russia and confrontation with China really about?
VP Vance provided a neat summary recently when he explained how he (and his tech overlords) want other countries trapped at the bottom of the value chain.
While talks with Russia currently appear to be taking the long train to nowhere, we can see what the US is after: mineral deals, infrastructure, a deal to weasel its way into a reopening of the Nord Stream pipelines. In other words, US plutocrats are after rent-seeking opportunities.
It’s similar with China, although a taller order as it involves keeping China down, but the U.S.-China Phase One trade agreement during Trump’s first term helps show us. From Foreign Policy:
At the time, [Trump] lauded the “historic” agreement as “righting the wrongs of the past.” He was proud of securing China’s commitment to purchase at least $200 billion worth of U.S. goods and services over a two-year period. The agreement went even further, obligating China to strengthen its intellectual property regime, curtail technology transfer requirements, lift barriers to U.S. agriculture exports, and refrain from currency manipulation. China lived up to most of these commitments but fell short on its purchasing obligations.
Now Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the US is engaging in economic warfare against China to lure Beijing to the negotiating table. Negotiate over what exactly?
This could include demanding more in terms of intellectual property protection, agriculture, and technology transfer while adding new areas of focus, such as cloud computing. Lessons could be drawn from the first go-around regarding purchasing commitments: making targets more realistic, conducting more regular progress monitoring, and realigning products of interest with what the U.S. private sector is ready to sell.
…U.S. negotiators should try to curb China’s use of subsidies and financial assistance and address the factors leading to excess production, such as limited domestic demand. But they shouldn’t be surprised if these efforts don’t gain traction. Washington might also consider an accommodation aimed at limiting U.S. imports of unfairly traded Chinese products. Rather than imposing unilateral high tariffs, this could be accomplished by setting quantitative limits on select Chinese exports, like batteries
…an agreement with Beijing must also consider its growing investments in third-country markets, particularly in the automotive and electronics sectors. Strengthened anti-circumvention measures, stricter rules of origin, greater operations transparency, and even export bans on specific Chinese companies would concretely address U.S. concerns about these investments.
That’s, umm, a lot, and would basically assure that the US gets to pump the brakes on China’s rise, which Beijing isn’t likely to accept, and so China’s ambitions are beyond what US plutocrats can stomach. And Putin mostly remains a villain because he put an end to Western-directed shock therapy in Russia.
If we take a step back from the “great game,” however, we see that whether deals are ultimately worked out or the conflicts continue, the spoils are increasingly pieces of a pandemic-ravaged, labor-decimated, climate-collapsed world. Altering that trajectory requires more than a changing of the guard.