In article <biqhu9$u6n$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, President, USA Exile Govt.
says...
Forwarded with Compliments of Free Voice of America (FVOA): Accurate
News and Interesting Commentary for Amerika's Huddled Masses Yearning
to Breathe Free. NOTE: Thanks to John Kaminski for this. --
kl, pp
At 8/16/2003 02:30 PM, rkm@quaylargo.com wrote:
Friends,
Following is the draft of a chapter I've been asked to contribute
to a book project. As usual, your comments are welcomed and the
text will surely improve as a result.
The themes will be familiar to you from past postings, but I think
this treatment is more solid than what has gone before. As I looked
over older things, like Escaping the Matrix, I found many of the
points were made a bit awkwardly. I'd be interested in your opinions
on this observation.
I'm currently thinking that this piece, and the one on "Faith,
Humanity, and Power" could be combined with ZGT to make up a new
book, a kind of second-edition ZGT. Thoughts invited.
yours, rkm
====================================================================
"Amerika's Role in World Politics 1914-2003"
1776-1918 -- a quick review
====================================================================
American history can be viewed through many useful lenses -- political
structure, social changes, economic development, etc. But there
is one lens that is most natural to that history, and that lens is
imperialism.
The American colonies had been imperial outposts of Britain, and
American merchants and traders were active participants in the
business of empire. Boston became the empire's third largest
trading port. When the British were kicked out in 1789 America was
in a very enviable position to pursue imperial expansion. Being
so far away from Europe it had no worries about balance of power
and all those rivalries the European powers needed to deal with.
It had loosed itself from the ban on industrialization and from
trade restrictions imposed on the colonies. It had a whole continent
to conquer. It had a huge trading fleet engaged in international
trade. It had immense natural resources.
And the new Constitution had been designed so that the commercial
elite would be running things (as they have to this day). A lion
had been loosed into the international community. A lion that had
been borne and raised in empire, which had a fierce appetite, and
which was dedicated to growth and expansion.
For most of its first century, the lion was content to gobble up
or exploit the territories in its immediate neighborhood. It
expanded westward -- an enterprise which was called nation-building
but which amounted to imperial expansion on a grand scale. It
carried out imperial ventures to the south -- gunboat diplomacy,
Mexican War, Monroe Doctrine, etc. The Civil War can be seen as
an imperial conquest of the South by the North, bringing the
aristocratic economy into the capitalist fold, and politically
enabling the protectionist policies required by rapid industrialization.
There isn't any other nation in the world today so characterized
by growth and expansion. It's in the blood, in the myths, in the
national character. Individuals with their careers, corporations
with their portfolios, and the nation with its adventures -- it's
all about growth, expansion, and acquisition. And at the heart of
this growth ethic lies a dedication to capitalism. Capitalism is
a system which must have growth in order to survive. If investors
don't have growth opportunities to invest in, the whole system
collapses. The expansionist American spirit and capitalism fit
together like hand and glove.
Expansionism provides growth opportunities and capitalism knows how
to exploit them, how to "capitalize" on them.
At the end of the nineteenth century, when the more local growth
opportunities had been exhausted, the US finally became a player
on the more global scene. It picked a fight with Spain and grabbed
Cuba and the Philippines. To the other great powers, this may have
looked like a new behavior by the US -- coming out of its shell so
to speak, finally getting into the conquest game. But if you
understand the preceding history, you realize the US was continuing
what it had been doing from the beginning -- growing and expanding.
So when World War I came along, the US was a mature player, hungry
for a bigger game. British historians talk about their balance-of-power
wisdom, but no nation has ever exploited leverage the way the US
habitually does. Why actually get involved in the bloody fracas
in Europe? Leave them to it. Act like you aren't sure which side
to come in on. Wait until near the end to get involved and then
see what pieces you can pick up, what brokerage role you can play.
Minimal effort, maximum gain, astute use of leverage.
Similarly, in its imperial activities, leverage has been the primary
style. Instead of installing a colonial administration, European
style, the US would simply arrange a coup and put in some dictator
who was beholden to his US helpers. Much cheaper. Same favored
access to resources and markets. Leverage.
1918-1941 -- The Inter-War Period ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is one of the most important eras in US history. The conventional
historical myth is that the US slept during this period -- lost in
its isolationism while Europe suffered under civil wars and fascism.
In this myth, the US giant is awakened only by a surprise attack
on Pearl Harbor. Then the noble giant, aroused, goes forth to aid
the forces of democracy and freedom against the forces of darkness.
The truth is oh so very different.
There is one thing about America that it is important to understand.
This is not unique to America by any means, but it gets overlooked
nonetheless. In America there are two realities. You might call
them the realities of White House announcements, and the reality
of what business is up to.
I'll call them PR and the real world. In PR, the US acts to "protect
American citizens". In the real world some US corporation is having
trouble with some local government.
What the two worlds have in common is that the Marines are being
sent into Santo Domingo.
If we want to understand what America is up to, it is often more
useful to look at what kind of business its corporations are carrying
on than it is to examine political speeches and diplomatic position
papers. During the inter-war period, while America was officially
neutral, General Motors had factories in Nazi Germany turning out
the Panzer tanks and the Luftwaffe bombers that were later to be
unleashed on the plains of France and over the skies of Britain.
So was the US neutral or not? Was GM a rogue profiteer, acting
against Washington's wishes, or was it a covert instrument of
geopolitical manipulation? Perhaps we begin to find an answer
when we note that those GM plants continued to operate throughout
the war, and that during the war critical military supplies were
sometimes shunted by American corporations to the Nazis, when it
was desperately needed by Allied forces.
In America, and again this is not unique, the same elite community
that dominates the boards of the big corporations also runs the
government agencies, heads the think-tanks, and acts as Presidential
advisors. In the real world, the US government acts as a kind of
Chamber of Commerce for American big business. Its main job is
to make the world safe for American profiteering, and to ensure
that sufficient growth opportunities are available to keep the
quarterly reports in the black.
I suggest that the US -- as an international player -- is defined
largely by what its corporations do. The government acts as a
supporting agency. Corporate activities only seldom show up in the
news or in the history books, but that is where the action is. When
things are going smoothly for business, there is nothing the
government needs to do and so we see news reports about something
else. If problems come up, then the Marines are dispatched and
we hear a story about a humanitarian peace-keeping mission. By
the nature of what we understand to be "news", the important business
of the world never gets reported.
>From this perspective, the inter-war years look quite different
than the historical mythology. What the US actually did during
these years, if you follow the money, was to systematically set all
the ducks in a row -- so that it could emerge from the coming war
as the most powerful nation on Earth. It supported the rise of
fascist regimes in Italy and Germany; it helped finance and arm the
Nazis;
it invested in and traded heavily with Japan; it provided technological
assistance to Japan and Germany; it made lots of money in the
process. This is not neutrality. This is collaboration. The
aggressive, nationalist governments of Germany and Japan were
something that the US helped create and nurtured in their growth.
Hitler's agenda was clear. He had published it in Mein Kampf and
he remained true to it always. His main mission in life was to
subjugate Russia and establish it as a great enslaved hinterland
of the Reich. Japan's agenda was also clear, defined by its vision
of a Co-Prosperity Sphere. The US collaborated -- by its business
actions -- in helping these aggressors prepare for their campaigns.
It watched while they launched their attacks and embroiled their
troops in wars with huge adversaries. It waited until just the
right moment, the moment of maximum leverage, and then it entered
the fray as an official player -- just in time to pick up the marbles
>from all the other exhausted players.
The "right moment" had been very carefully identified in advance.
The Council on Foreign Relations carried out a series of studies
>from 1939 to 1941 and decided that Southeast Asia was the line that
Japan could not be allowed to cross. And when that line was crossed,
Roosevelt promptly froze Japanese assets in American banks and
thereby cut off Japan's oil supply. Japan considered that an act
of war, which it was, and Japan's reaction was anticipated by
Roosevelt. He waited patiently for the inevitable attack, which
was soon known to be Pearl Harbor. When the intelligence reports
came in identifying the time of attack, the strategic carriers were
dispatched to sea and antiquated ships were left in harbor as
sacrificial lambs. By first pretending neutrality, and later
pretending surprise and outrage over Pearl Harbor, the US was able
to enter the war as a wronged party, presumably innocent of any
imperial designs of its own.
Notice the use of leverage at every turn. Instead of marching out
to conquer the world, Hitler style, the US set up everyone else to
fight one another, making a tidy profit in the process. Instead
of declaring war on Japan, and being identified as an imperial
player, it provoked Japan into providing a more appealing PR scenario.
Instead of entangling itself with formal alliances, it simply
invested in those regimes it wanted to foster, and then turned on
them when it saw fit. Instead of sending troops in to fight Hitler,
it waited in its UK bases until the Russians turned the tide on the
Nazis. Then it rushed in with its D-Day fanfare and raced to try
to get to Berlin before the Russians, being opposed by only a small
fraction of the Nazi divisions deployed in the Russian theater.
The supposedly slept-through inter-war years prepared the way for
a brief four years of high-leverage US military activity between
1942 and 1945. When the dust had settled, the US emerged with
control of the seven seas, 40% of the world's wealth and industrial
capacity, and had escaped the destruction and economic hardship
suffered by all the other participants in the war. It was at its
peak while everyone else was on the floor. It had pulled off the
greatest coup in world history and no one even noticed. It had
arranged to become global hegemon while being perceived as a
benevolent liberator. It had power, wealth, and psychology on its
side as it set out to shape the postwar world. The lion was preparing
to run the world, and he was being welcomed world-wide as a lamb.
1945-1980 -- The Postwar Era ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The
US had a blueprint for the world, a plan that had been prepared in
that same series of CFR studies that had identified the entry point
for US intervention. The UN, the World Bank, the IMF, and the whole
Bretton Woods setup had all been carefully worked out in advance,
before Pearl Harbor.
On the PR surface, Bretton Woods appeared to be yet another act of
benevolence on the part of liberator Uncle Sam.
After saving the world from fascism, the US was now sponsoring a
new era of peace and stability. Nations would sit down in the UN
and work out their problems instead of settling them by warfare.
Currencies were to be stabilized and democracy was to be spread
throughout the world as the old colonial empires were gradually
disbanded.
The reality, however, was quite different. In Holly Sklar's
anthology, "Trilateralism", Laurence Shoup and William Minter examine
the discussions that went on in the pre-1945 CFR planning sessions:
"Recommendation P-B23 (July, 1941) stated that worldwide financial
institutions were necessary for the purpose of 'stabilizing currencies
and facilitating programs of capital investment for constructive
undertakings in backward and underdeveloped regions.' During the
last half of 1941 and in the first months of 1942, the Council
developed this idea for the integration of the world.... Isaiah
Bowman first suggested a way to solve the problem of maintaining
effective control over weaker territories while avoiding overt
imperial conquest. At a Council meeting in May 1942, he stated that
the United States had to exercise the strength needed to assure
'security," ' and at the same time 'avoid conventional forms of
imperialism.' The way to do this, he argued, was to make the exercise
of that power international in character through a United Nations
body."
In fact the Bretton Woods system was a design for a new regime of
global imperialism. The old regime was one of competitive,
partitioned imperialism. France, Britain, and the other players
each had their own private colonial realm.
Economic opportunities for each nation could be measured by the
size of its colonial realm, and competition over realms was the
cause behind the frequent wars among the European powers. The US
vision was to convert competitive imperialism into collaborative
imperialism. Instead of partitioned realms, there would be one
global market where all players could seek their fortunes. European
nations would no longer need to compete militarily for territories,
but could instead compete in a business sense for the opportunities
opened up by the global market.
The US would provide a level economic playing-field to its European
counterparts, but it preserved certain prerogatives to itself. The
US was to be the primary policeman, the supreme arbiter of imperial
stability. This prerogative was challenged just once, when Britain
and France launched the Suez War -- the kind of thing they had been
doing for centuries. The US promptly put an end to that and Pax
Americana has reigned supreme ever since as the international
military order.
For centuries people thought that European wars would never end;
they had been regular affairs all that time. But once Pax Americana
was established, the idea of France, Germany, or Britain fighting
one another became ludicrous. Credit is commonly given to the EU
for ensuring this peace, but that's simply pro-Brussels propaganda.
By the time the EU came along European peace had already been ensured
-- the motivation for inter-sibling warfare had been removed.
It seems strange now to realize how peripheral the Cold War was to
all this. The Cold War seemed so important at the time, so central
to world affairs. Perhaps it was the fear we all had of nuclear
catastrophe. But in fact, now that we can see it in perspective,
the Cold War was simply a matter of the US excluding the Communist
World, in so far as possible, from interfering with or participating
in the global imperial regime which the US had established. We
were presented with a myth of an expansionist Soviet empire,
threatening the Free World. What we actually had was a global
American empire, with the Soviets more concerned about their own
economic and literal survival than with any kind of expansionism.
So, in the end, the Cold War stands only as a side chapter in the
story of the twentieth century, a temporary distraction to the main
story -- the continual growth of American wealth and power. That
is why the end of the Cold War did not bring the great relaxation
of tensions that we had all hoped for. It turned out to be irrelevant
to the real business of America, the business of empire.
The American scheme for postwar global development performed
brilliantly, as measured by the prosperity of Western nations and
populations.
In the world of Western elites there was one kind of prosperity
going on. Corporations launched forth into the global marketplace,
experienced rapid growth, and developed into what we now call the
transnational corporations (TNCs).
There had always been a few TNCs, ever since the Hudson's Bay Company
and the British East India Company. And we had the Seven Sister
oil companies. But in the postwar era TNCs sprung up in every
business sector, and became commercially dominant and all-pervasive
on a scale never seen before.
The commerce of the world was being centralized, under the control
of the boards of a few dozen global corporations.
>From a capitalist perspective, the postwar years might be called
the "Era of Global Consolidation".
In the world of ordinary people in the West, another kind of
prosperity was going on. This was an era characterized by high
employment, rising standards of living, improved working conditions,
low crime rates, increased social services, a growing middle class,
and gains in civil rights and civil liberties. From a social
perspective, one might call the postwar period "The Great Era of
Liberal Democracy".
It is an era which is no more. Our own time can be characterized
almost as the opposite of the postwar years -- rising unemployment,
lowering living standards, worsening working conditions, rising
crime rates, decreasing social services, a shrinking middle class,
and losses of civil rights and civil liberties. Where did it all
go and why?
On the surface everything seemed rosy for the West in the postwar
era. The problem with the scenario was that it was not sustainable.
All that prosperity was being driven by a particular engine -- the
engine of rapid and profitable global development. The new imperial
regime had been established for the purpose of creating an open
global marketplace and exploiting the huge development opportunities
that then became available. That happened, and the rewards were
reaped, in particular by the US, Europe, and Japan. But the Earth,
large as it is, is finite. Even global markets can eventually be
saturated and stop growing.
In the 1970s that is what began to happen. The postwar boom was
losing its bang. Economic growth was slowing down.
Something was going to have to give somewhere. It would no longer
be possible to afford everything that had been possible during the
height of the postwar boom. Things weren't going to collapse
overnight, but the handwriting was on the wall. In such circumstances
a smart person or group would make preparations to deal with the
change -- if in a position to do so.
Elite Planning and Global Management ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Recall that the whole postwar global scenario was orchestrated with
some considerable precision way back before Pearl Harbor by a study
group of the Council on Foreign Relations. Their blueprint was
implemented, and it led to the kind of results it had aimed for.
The US government showed itself to be capable of shepherding the
project along and keeping it close enough to a true course, through
the effective use of money, diplomacy, and force of arms -- both
overt and covert. And the US government, along with the elite-run
media, was able to maintain adequate public support through the
twists and turns of the project -- creating cover stories and spin
at every juncture to hide the real meaning behind what was going
on.
To put it another way: Throughout the postwar era the world was
being intentionally guided and managed according to an explicit
plan that was hatched by a group of professional analysts who were
reporting to top elements of the American elite establishment. In
it's high-leverage, indirect, behind-the-scenes style, the US and
its elite had been in effect running the world their way ever since
1945 -- even though most people did not fully realize that was going
on.
Although the original Bretton Woods blueprint was remarkably
comprehensive and foresightful, the business of running the In the
postwar years a huge intelligence & analysis apparatus arose around
the Washington beltway to carry out such required tasks of empire.
The CIA and related intelligence agencies, countless think tanks
and consulting firms, and the Council on Foreign Relations all play
a role in this elite-run apparatus.
When things were booming in the postwar era, the job of this apparatus
was to keep things booming, and to alert the political apparatus
whenever intervention was going to be needed. And when things
began to stop booming, the attention of this apparatus sensibly
turned to re-considering the founding blueprint. Smart people
prepare for predictable change, and that is exactly what happened.
One particular document stands out as a pivotal and candid expression
of the kind of thinking that was going on in US elite circles as
the postwar boom began running out of steam. In 1975 Samuel P.
Huntington, of the Council on Foreign Relations, published his
now-infamous essay, "The Crisis of Democracy". Consider this
passage, and again I am borrowing from "Trilateralism":
"To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone during
the decades after World War II, it was governed by the President
acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and
groups in the executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress,
and the more important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations,
and media, which constitute the private sector's 'Establishment'."
Huntington's view of how the US is governed, evidently, was in
complete alignment with the perspective I have been presenting in
this chapter. He makes no mention of the electorate or the political
process as providing input to the policy process. Instead he
identifies a constituency which is more or less the same as what I
have been calling the "commercial elite" and the "intelligence &
analysis apparatus" -- and I have several times mentioned collaboration
by the elite-run media. Perhaps we can take Huntington's words as
an insider corroboration of that aspect of this analysis.
Elsewhere in his essay, Huntington tells us that democratic societies
"cannot work" unless the citizenry is "passive."
The "democratic surge of the 1960s" represented an "excess of
democracy," which must be reduced if governments are to carry out
their traditional domestic and foreign policies.
He is saying that whether American society (in particular) "works"
is defined by whether or not the government can carry out its
"traditional domestic and foreign policies".
That is: if the elite establishment can continue to run the nation
according to its agenda, then the society can "work";
otherwise it can't. In order to keep society "working", which is
presumably an obvious imperative, Huntington is suggesting that the
level of democracy needs to be reduced -- presumably by means of
appropriate actions to be undertaken by the elite establishment.
It is difficult to tell how widely shared Huntington's views were
in elite circles in 1975. He may have been summarizing an emerging
elite consensus, or he may have been championing new ideas which
were later to find wider acceptance. But we do need to keep in
mind that Huntington was and is a prestigious member of the elite
community, a highly respected Professor of History at Harvard, and
one whose ideas are taken very seriously by many influential people.
We can at least infer from his words that elites were discussing
the crisis of declining global growth, and that they were willing
to entertain a radical re-examination of the basic foundations of
the 1945 blueprint in order to respond to that crisis. An explicit
curtailment of liberal democratic institutions, for example, was
not beyond consideration by serious people in the elite community.
1980-2001 -- The Era of Corporatization
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Let us consider for a
moment the problem of declining economic growth -- from the perspective
of elite planners.
What options were available to them to deal with that problem?
Certainly they would not consider abandoning capitalism -- and under
capitalism economic growth is not simply desirable, it is an absolute
necessity. The planners needed to find new growth room for
capitalism no matter what the cost might be in non-monetary terms.
>From the birth of the US until the 1970s the problem of economic
growth had always been solved by expansion of its economic operations
The whole economic pie kept getting bigger by this means, and from
that pie the nation was able to run its affairs, the people were
able to take their livelihoods, and the elite were able to extract
their capital gains. But this time that solution was no longer
available. Expansion had reached the ultimate global scale and was
finally beginning to exhaust itself.
If the overall pie could not grow any more, the only solution for
the elite was to increase the share of the pie which they claimed
for their own profit-taking. The continuation of capitalism
required that the nation must run its affairs with less, and that
the people must survive on less -- so that the elite could continue
to have more. That is what was required for the American system
to continue "working", for capitalism to survive. The postwar
blueprint had been based on a growing pie, and a new blueprint was
now needed.
Redistribution of the economic pie was the only available solution,
and the implementation of that solution is precisely what was
launched with the political campaigns of Ronald Reagan and Margaret
Thatcher and carried forward in their subsequent administrations.
As we review their policies, we can read the new blueprint.
Corporate tax cuts were one of the central policies. That represented
a direct transfer of wealth from governments to corporations -- an
obvious redistribution of the pie favoring elite investors at the
expense of social programs and other governmental operations.
Privatization was another central policy. Infrastructures and
programs which had been run on a non-profit basis for the public
good were thereby turned into profit-making ventures under the
control of private operators. This increased the elite share of
the pie still further. The cost of privatization was of two kinds.
In monetary terms, the population had to pay for the profits taken
by the investors. In terms of democratic institutions, the cost
paid was a loss of control. Programs and infrastructure which had
been under the control of the political process were now under the
direct control of elite investors and their hired managers. This
is part of what was implied by Huntington's "reduction" of "excess
democracy".
Deregulation was the third major policy, and again this represented
a disenfranchisement of democratic institutions -- for the benefit
of elite profit-taking. To the extent regulations were removed,
corporations were free to increase their profits in ways that were
contrary to the public good and destabilizing to the national
economy.
The consequences of these policies included loss of government
control over cross-border currency transactions, elite looting of
formerly protected industries (eg., UK pension funds, US Savings &
Loan Industry), curtailment of social benefits, a general and
continuing decline in living standards and quality of life, and the
impoverishment of governments due to under-funded budgets. The
core of the new blueprint was clearly a transfer of both wealth and
power from nations and their populations to corporations. By this
means economic growth was able to continue under the capitalist
system.
The next stage of the new elite program was to export these neoliberal
polices from the US and Britain to the rest of the world -- a process
that came to be known as "globalization". In order to accomplish
this, it was necessary for American and British elites to persuade
European elites to go along with the program. This was not difficult
as European elites were facing the same problem of declining growth.
The US and Britain had found a formula that "worked" and that was
an inarguable selling point.
Thus when the Maastricht Treaty was drafted, by financial ministers
rather than political ministers, its core provisions focused on
what was called a "conservative fiscal policy". Thereby neoliberalism
got its foot into the back door of Europe, avoiding the political
difficulty of entering by the front door as had been accomplished
via Reagan and Thatcher.
With Western elites generally on board, globalization began to move
into high gear. The GATT treaty process was employed to force
through agreements which were aimed at transferring wealth and power
to corporations globally, at the expense of governments and
populations. The IMF introduced "restructuring programs" which
forced third-world governments to adopt neoliberal policies in order
to obtain needed financing. In the third world, the economic
suffering and political destabilization caused by globalization far
exceeded that experienced by Western populations.
The WTO, the IMF, and the other globalist institutions were becoming
a de facto world government. These institutions have immense power
to regulate not only international trade, but also to dictate
internal policies to national governments. Environmental protection
laws and safety regulations by nations are routinely overruled by
the WTO, on the pretext that they are "protectionist". These
globalist institutions are under the direct control of elites, with
no public representation or input.
As the Twentieth Century drew to a close, the world had become a
quite different place than it had been during the postwar era.
Instead of governments regulating corporations, corporations now
regulated governments through the authority vested in the World
Trade Organization and IMF by neoliberal treaties. Instead of
prosperous nations and improving living conditions in the West,
governments were struggling to manage their budgets and living
conditions were continually deteriorating. The overall pattern of
the new elite blueprint was now becoming clear: the world was being
corporatized. The transnational corporation was becoming the
primary unit of power in global society, rather than the nation
state. Political power had become subservient to corporate power.
Capitalism had triumphed over democracy. The Enlightenment vision
of sovereign and democratic republics had been covertly replaced
by corporatism -- Mussolini's preferred name for fascism.
2002-? -- The Great American Century
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The previous section was
characterized by a heavy emphasis on economic affairs. This may
at times have seemed out of place in a chapter on "world politics",
where traditional geopolitical issues may have been more expected.
I suggest however that this emphasis has been entirely appropriate.
The world of politics has been transformed in such a way that
economics and politics are now difficult to separate.
Corporations had been seen as economic enterprises and now they
have evolved, as TNCs, into entities with more wealth and more
political power than most nations. Any discussion of political
affairs would be quite incomplete without a treatment of these
developments.
This chapter has also devoted considerable space to the role of
elites in American society, which might also seem to have been
overemphasized, given our topic. But again I suggest this emphasis
has been appropriate. One cannot understand the role America has
played since 1945 from the traditional perspective of "national
interests". In the postwar era America broke the traditional
nationalist mold and embarked on a course of world management rather
than outright world domination. America's elite were using the
power of the US as a policing tool on behalf of an agenda that went
beyond narrow national interests. Japan and Europe benefited
right along with America during the postwar boom years.
Japanese and European elites benefited along with American elites
during the era of globalization and corporatization.
But we must never forget that this was all due to the covert activity
of a well-organized and entrenched elite community whose nerve
center lies along the Washington DC beltway.
For, like the postwar era before it, the corporatization era also
came up against the limits of growth. Indeed, capitalism will
always encounter a limit to its growth, no matter how many times
its elites find a way to reshuffle the economic and political cards.
In a finite world, capitalism is simply unsustainable. Neoliberalism
managed to squeeze more profits out of Western populations, and
globalization has been squeezing the daylights out of the third
world. But when you squeeze the juice out of something, even
something big, you sooner or later run out of juice. When you get
down to a trickle, you move on to the next course.
The collapse of the Korean "Tiger" economy can be taken as the
symbol of the beginning of the end of globalization as we've known
it. Pundits rushed in to explain the crash in terms of unwise
economic policies, lack of transparency, and the like. However,
those same pundits only months before were praising Korea as a
paragon of competitiveness. They can't have it both ways. What
actually happened is that Korea was taken out, snuffed. Its currency
was raided in a coordinated attack, and then the IMF came in and
supervised the systematic looting of Korean assets by non-Korean
corporations. The wolves of globalization were beginning to devour
one another.
The postwar era opened up a new global market and corporations
rushed out to exploit that level playing field.
When that ran out of steam, neoliberalism was invented so as to
squeeze still more out that global market and out of the domestic
imperial economies. When that began to run out of steam, the only
thing left was to pursue a shakeout strategy. Collaborative
imperialism was OK when it "worked", but when push comes to shove
we must remember that the top-gun elite community is centered in
the US, not in Tokyo or Seoul -- or Berlin or Paris.
Let us consider for a moment America's insistence on a Pax Americana
in the postwar world. If US elites were willing to share the global
marketplace, why were they not willing to turn policing into a
collaborative venture? Perhaps they simply wanted to be the only
ones in town with a six-gun -- just in case. Or perhaps they were
even more foresightful than we've given them credit for so far.
But the fact today is this: if there is going to be a major shakeout
among the world's corporate and national players, the US elite holds
a decisive advantage by being in control of the world's only
superpower.
The New American Century began on September 11, 2001. At the top
of the TV screen was the slogan, "War on America", and within hours
the blame had been laid on a sinister looking villain, a villain
whose only motivation was a pathological desire to destroy democracy
and freedom. It was right out of 1984, or perhaps Batman. And it
wasn't long before we heard about a War on Terrorism that would
last indefinitely, and already they knew it would cost exactly $30
billion. From the very early days, the episode had all the earmarks
of a Reichstag Fire, an inside job.
As evidence has become available regarding the events leading up
the the attack, that evidence has all been in conflict with the
official story line, and none has been corroborative. As the
official story has twisted and turned, in response to the incriminating
evidence, that has only detracted further from the story's credibility.
The administration keeps repeating its claims as truths, offering
no evidence, as one would expect in the case of a Big Lie. From
the perspective of an objective detective trying to solve a case
-- where everyone in the room is a suspect -- an inside-job Reichstag
Fire is by far the most likely explanation for what happened that
fateful day.
On the other hand, if the far-fetched Bin Laden conspiracy theory
is true, then we must give the American elite credit for an incredibly
fast-footed response. In that case they managed to exploit an
unexpected fire with all the same precision and speed one would
have expected following a pre-planned job.
We now know that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and crew came into the White
House with a detailed agenda up their sleeve, and it was an agenda
that would have been very difficult to pursue without the dramatic
events of 9-11. Indeed, such an agenda would have been incomplete
if it did not include a plan for achieving domestic public acceptance
and international acquiescence.
The agenda was written up as a report for Rumsfeld et al a year
prior to 9-11 by the "Project for the New American Century", one
of those think-tanks that comprise the intelligence & analysis
apparatus. The report calls for the US to seize control of the
world's critical resources and to maintain itself indefinitely as
the undisputed global hegemon. No challenge, large or small, to
American pre-eminence is to be tolerated. The report calls for
the US to take military control of the Gulf region regardless of
what the Saddam regime does or doesn't do. And, significantly, the
report says that what America needs in order to dominate the world
in this way is "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new
Pearl Harbor".
As with Huntington's "Crisis of Democracy", one cannot tell from
the text whether the writer is tossing out new ideas or is acting
as a spokesperson for an elite consensus. One can only tell
afterward, by whether unfolding events match the written agenda.
The agenda for a New American Century would have seemed beyond
belief -- if it wasn't coming true before our eyes, and if its
promoters weren't running the White House.
In response to yet another capitalist growth crisis, the American
elite establishment has adopted yet another blueprint defining yet
another paradigm of world order. In the postwar blueprint, the US
invited the other great powers and their populations to join in the
collective imperialization of the third world, betraying the victim's
trust in the Bretton Woods rhetoric. In the corporatist blueprint,
the US elite invited the elites of the other great powers to join
them in betraying their nations and populations -- for mutual
benefit. In the New American Century blueprint, the last surviving
collaborators are being betrayed as well. The American elite have
circled their wagons and little more than the Pentagon and the
Homeland Security apparatus remain inside their circle.
Homeland Security is needed to keep the domestic population under
control, while the Pentagon keeps everyone else under control.
=======================================================================
There is not a problem with the system.
The system is the problem.
Faith in humanity, not gods or ideologies.
cyberjournal home page:
http://cyberjournal.org
"Zen of Global Transformation" home page:
http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/
QuayLargo discussion forum:
http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ShowChat/?ScreenName=ShowThreads
cj list archives:
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=cj
newslog list archives:
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=newslog
'Truthout' excellent news source:
http://www.truthout.org
subscribe addresses for cj list:
cj-subscribe@cyberjournal.org cj-unsubscribe@cyberjournal.org
============================================================
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: cj-unsubscribe@cyberjournal.org For additional
commands, e-mail: cj-help@cyberjournal.org
+++
Jay Fenello, Internet Services http://www.Fenello.com ... 678-585-9765
http://www.YourWebPartner.com ... Web Partnering
http://www.AligningWithPurpose.com ... for a Better World
---------------------------------------------------------- "Behind
the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government
owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the
people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy
alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first
task of the statesmanship of the day." -- Theodore Roosevelt
###
Permission to forward granted when this trailer's included:
This message is from the "Aligning With Purpose Discussion" list.
Please send subscribe requests to awpd-subscribe@yahoogroups.com,
unsubscribe requests to awpd-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com, or check
out the website at http://www.AligningWithPurpose.com.