THE heading for this article is rather bold in predicting 2024 will be the year the US empire, Pax Americana, will be upended.

Firstly a caveat – this is just a prediction, and as with all predictions, it could be right or wrong.

In predicting what to expect in 2024, the writer thinks a new world order will “unexpectedly” emerge based on respect for international economic and humanitarian laws.

An interesting feature of this brave new world is that there’s no difference between it and the current decaying unipolar rules-based world, except no country, even a superpower, will be able to sway the rules in its favour in order to gain unjust supremacy as a hegemon in the geo-socio-economic and geo-socio-political realms.

The inspiration for this bold prediction lies in the fact that there are many nuggets of happenings since the Ukraine war unfolded in 2022 that could be described simply as a manifestation that the writings are already on the wall for an impending collapse of the US empire.

Among some of these that we can see are how Europe has suddenly become so subservient to the US that it is already an “occupied territory” of the USA, so to speak, much in the same way the USA has suddenly become the “occupied territory” of Israel.

The rise of Russia, China and India as superpowers, along with the consolidation of Brics as Brics-10 on January 1 is also another factor to consider.

In addition, there is also the explicit shift in global public opinion which favours Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war, and especially the Palestinians in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

In the case of the former, the seemingly invincible global public opinion on Russophobia influenced and shaped by the US and the collective West with their strong linkage to political Zionism shifted in favour of Russia about one and half years after the war commenced when the Ukrainian counteroffensive in June lost steam.

More stunning is the latter, when for more than 75 years the invincible global public opinion which favours the US, Europe and Israel shifted in favour of the Palestinians.

The US and Europe through the Jewish lobby fought back to wrest control of the global public opinion by passing a law that any criticism of Israel, even the criticism of its genocide on Palestinian civilians, is a punishable offence because it is a form of hate speech i.e. anti-Semitism that mars the memory of the Holocaust.

But judging by the continuous weekend protests worldwide calling for an end to the genocide and for an immediate permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip to be implemented, this attempt at stifling the pro-Palestinian stance seems to be a miserable failure.          

The writer has a very sad experience on this when a tycoon friend of his accused him of indulging in hate speech in response to a WhatsApp message he sent on how some of the Iron Dome missiles of Israel had malfunctioned.

Instead of exploding in mid-air without hitting Hamas incoming rockets, the Iron Dome missiles made a U-turn and hit Israel’s residential areas and a military base.

Perhaps it was when the writer said that this is the work of Allah that the accusation of hate speech was levelled against him.

Because this tycoon has an extensive business dealings in the US, he may be very much influenced with the US’ attempt to stifle criticism of Israel in the spirit of the recent introduction of its law on anti-Semitism, despite insisting that he is neutral.

But it is a good thing that in Malaysia such anti-Semitic law is non-existent because both the government of Malaysia led by Anwar Ibrahim and the majority of its citizens support the struggle of the Palestinians to free themselves from Israeli occupation and to have an independent state of their own.

Let’s get to the roots of what anti-Semitism is all about.

The Semitic people traces their descent from Sem (or Sham in the Islamic tradition) who was one of Prophet Noah’s (Nuh) sons, hence the adjective Semitic to describe this people.

One of the descendants of Sem is the patriarch of the three Abrahamic religions, Prophet Abraham (peace be upon him).  

Abraham has two sons – elder son Ishmael (Ismail) and Isaac (Ishak). While the descendants of Ismail are the Arabs, the descendants of Isaac through Jacob (Yaacob) are Jews.

So the Arab and Jew are brethren to each other as their progenitors were siblings. This fact alone should make Arabs and Jews live harmoniously among each other because they came from the same family tree.

But due to centuries of pogroms and persecutions of the Jews by the Christian West culminating in the Holocaust in the 20^th century, the West perhaps out of guilty conscience invented the term “anti-Semitism” to atone for their cruelties on the Jews by being their protector.

In this regard, during the pogroms and persecutions it was to the Muslim Arab countries that the Jews fled for safety and protection, and the Arabs being their brethren took good care of them.

So from all these elucidations, anti-Semitism as conceived by the West should not be exclusively meant for the protection of Jews alone but also the Arabs because they are also a Semitic people.

Seen from this perspective Islamophobia, which includes the dehumanising of the Palestinian Arabs, should also be seen as anti-Semitism.      

But in the overall scheme of things, anti-Semitism, whether as a form of protection for the Jews or Arabs or both, is an exclusivist concept because by right all oppressed people should be afforded protection and not just the Jews and Arabs.

Anyway the Arabs have never asked for protection from the West in the form of anti-Semitism.

So it’s best that the term anti-Semitism be eliminated from the English vocabulary especially when its use has been hijacked by political Zionism to perpetuate its cruelty on fellow Semites, the Palestinians.

Back to the narrative on the end of the US empire.

It is also your editor’s contention the seeming contradiction that the longer the Israel-Gaza war takes place, the faster and sudden the end of the US empire will be, just like beads strung on a string follow one another very quickly like dominoes when the string is broken.

It is also important to note that the end of an empire does not mean the empire will immediately cease to exist.

The “demise” of the Soviet Union for instance actually occurred in 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin wall, which signalled the end of the Cold War but the Soviet Union still existed for two more years until its total eclipse in 1991.

Similarly the demise of the British Empire (Pax Britannica) occurred in the aftermath of WWI when many of its colonies became independent through the blood, sweat and tears of the struggle for independence of the people in the colonies.

Yet the British Empire continued to exist right through WWII and collapsed only in the aftermath of the war when more colonies were reluctantly given independence, the British pound sterling ceased to be the reserve currency of the world and Britain as a former superpower had to beg for “monetary mercy” from the IMF to borrow monies in 1976.     

Once in a while, perhaps due to nostalgia and deep longing for a revival of its empire, the British government did act like it’s still an empire by sending a warship to Guyana in order to intervene in the latter’s current territorial dispute with Venezuela when Guyana did not even request for military assistance.    

Or when Britain announced its warship will ply the Black Sea to protect Ukrainian ports in Odessa and Izmail from Russian attack in the Ukraine war.

It was only when Venezuela responded with sending its navy to patrol the international waters near its border that Britain woke up from its dream and got real by withdrawing its warship from the area.

Ditto with its dreamy foray to the Black Sea when Russia responded by saying that all British warships or vessels in the Black Sea will be regarded as legitimate target of attack that we don’t hear any more of this British bravado and nostalgia. – January 10, 2024.

* Jamari Mohtar reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.