The
Absence of Diplomacy Is Isolating Washington
By Paul
Craig Roberts
June
06, 2018 "Information
Clearing House"
-
The
dissolution of the Soviet Union removed the
constraint on Washington’s unilateralism. The
neoconservatives, who had just risen to power,
seized the opportunity and replaced diplomacy
with threat and coercion. One infamous example
is from the George W. Bush regime when the
Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage,
told Pakistan to do as you are told or you will
be bombed into the stone age. We have this on
the authority of the president of Pakistan
himself, who did as he was told.
In the
case of Russia during the Putin era, this level
of threat is excessive as Russia can bomb back.
So the threat has been reduced to: do as you are
told or we will impose sanctions.
Sanctions are an assertion of hegemony of one
country over another. They are an assertion that
the imposer of sanctions has extra-legal
international authority to tell other sovereign
states what to do or to suffer consequences if
they do not.
Once
the constraint on Washington’s unilateralism was
removed, sanctions became an instrument of US
foreign policy and replaced diplomacy. The
Clinton regime used them on Iraq. When the UN
reported that the effect of the Clinton regime’s
sanctions on Iraq was the deaths of 500,000
Iraqi children, Clinton’s Jewish Secretary of
State was asked by Lesley Stahl on the national
TV program “60 Minutes” if the sanctions were
worth the deaths of a half million children.
Madeliene Albright said yes, “the price is worth
it.” The Jews feel the same way about the
Palestinians. As the Palestinians’ country has
been stolen by Israel, what is the point of
Palestinians? Killing them is Israel’s answer.
As one Israeli minister said, we are only doing
what the Americans did to the native Americans
known as Indians. As America shares this crime
with Israel, little wonder that Washington
always vetoes any UN action against Israel for
its crimes against the Palestinians. The two
criminal states stand united against the world.
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And
from Washington’s view, it has been “worth
it” ever since as Washington during the 21st
century proceeded to destroy in whole or
part seven countries, and is still working
on several more.
Any
time a country doesn’t follow Washington’s
orders, Washington imposes sanctions. Iran,
North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela are all
bearers of Washington’s sanctions. Moreover,
Washington forces other countries, including its
European allies, to also impose sanctions or
Washington will sanction them as well.
This
worked until Washington’s assertion of its
hegemony over the world became excessive. That
happened when Trump, guided by Israel and by
Israel’s neoconservative agents who are Trump’s
advisers, denounced and withdrew from the
Iranian nuclear agreement signed by the US,
Iran, Russia, China, France, the UK, and
Germany.
When
Washington’s European vassals did not also
withdraw from the agreement that they had
signed, Trump threatened them with sanctions.
All of
Europe already suffers from high unemployment.
Washington’s sanctions worsen the situation for
Europe, which has resumed profitable business
with Iran. Finally Europe has caught on.
Washington is telling Europe that Europe must
suffer economically so that Washington can
exercise hegemony, from which Europe gets no
benefit.
This is
too much even for the European and British
governments that have been Washington’s vassals
since 1945. Rebellion is reported everywhere in
the Internet news although not in the
presstitute media. European and EU officials are
saying that it is time that Europe represents
its own interests instead of Washington’s. Even
the head of the EU, a CIA creation, is in
rebellion.
Will
the rebellion last, or is it merely the antics
of Europeans long on Washington’s payroll
posturing for more money? How much does
Washington have to shell out to quiet the
European rebellion?
Vladimir Putin has been eating insults and
provocations for years while awaiting for
Washington’s arrogance to break up its European
empire. Perhaps Putin’s patience is paying off,
and it is happening now.
There
are signs that Washington is isolating itself.
Washington has ordered India and also Turkey, a
NATO member, not to purchase Russian weapons
systems, but both countries have given the bird
to Washington, rejected Washington’s
interference in their affairs and have gone
ahead with the purchases.
The
chairman of the European Commission, Jean Claude
Juncker, said that it was time for Europe to
reconnect with Russia and to stop attacking
Russia. Will the EU, the CIA’s own creation,
turn against Washington?
It is
possible. Washington has threatened Germany with
sanctions if Germany participates in Russia’s
North Stream 2 gas pipeline project bringing
energy to Europe. Washington’s preference is
that Europe close down from lack of energy
rather than to be dependent on Russia, as this
dependency reduces Washington’s power over
Europe.
Germany’s Merkel, long Washington’s whore, has
changed her spots. She announced that the US is
no longer a reliable political partner and that
Germany “needs to take its fate into its own
hands.” The latest poll shows that 82 percent of
Germans agree with her that Washington is an
“unreliable partner.”
Washington, wallowing in its fabled
incompetence, is now worsening all of its empire
relationships by threatening its own allies with
trade wars. There is no one of sufficient
competence in the Trump regime to be able to
understand that America’s “trade problem” is
entirely of its own making and is not due to
Mexico, Canada, China, and Europe.
America’s extremely serious trade problem is due
to globalism, neoliberal economics, and to the
New York investment banks.
The US
trade deficit with China has its origin in the
offshoring of American jobs. Products, such as
Levis, Nike shoes, Apple computers, once
produced in America by American workers are now
produced abroad where wages and various
compliance costs are much lower. When these
products produced abroad for American markets by
US corporations come back to the US to be sold,
they arrive as imports. Thus, the offshored
production of US corporations is the most direct
cause of American trade deficits.
However, this basic, indisputable fact is never
reported by the presstitute media, or by the
neoliberal economists or US government
statistical agencies. The pretense is that it is
all China’s, or Mexico’s, or Canada’s fault. You
would never know that it was the direct result
of the profit-seeking activity of US
corporations.
What
has happened is that with the Soviet
dissolution, the governments of socialist India
and communist China made a decision that
capitalism was the wave of the future, and they
opened their labor markets to foreign capital.
The
American firms that did not want to desert their
home towns and work forces by offshoring their
production were forced to do so by threats from
the New York investment banks. Domestic
producers were told to move operations to China
where lower labor costs would boost profits or
face a takeover of the corporation that would
raise profits by moving operations abroad.
The
reason high productivity high value-added jobs
have exited America is because of Wall Street
and the greed of corporate executives and
shareholders. As always happens, the ruling
interest groups and their Washington puppets
blame foreigners, thus protecting themselves.
However, now they have started what is
mischaracterized as a “trade war.”
In effect, the Trump regime is not at war with
China and other countries. The Trump regime is
at war with the US corporations who moved their
production for US markets offshore and with the
New York banks that forced this move. The
tariffs will fall not on Chinese exports but on
the offshored production of US corporations. The
tariffs will raise the price that Americans pay
for the products that US corporation make in
China.
Trump’s
tariffs on steel and aluminum raise the cost of
inputs used in US production functions. Raising
the price of these inputs means that the
products of US industry made from steel and
aluminum also rise in price, thus hurting US
competitiveness. This is the opposite of how
protectionism is supposed to work. Protectionism
works by minimizing the costs of inputs and by
protecting outputs with tariffs on competing
foreign products. In other words, the prices of
domestically produced goods are lowered, and the
prices of competing imports are raised.
The
neoliberal economists lied when they gave
assurances that the US manufacturing and
professional skill jobs moved offshore would be
replaced with better jobs for Americans. As the
official payroll data makes clear, the
replacement jobs are worse, consisting as they
do of lowly paid domestic service jobs that
characterize employment in third world
countries.
Jobs
offshoring has been disastrous for America. The
resulting trade deficit is the least of it. The
loss of well-paying jobs has hurt consumer
purchasing power. To maintain living standards,
consumers have substituted debt for the missing
income. The result is that 41 percent of
Americans cannot raise $400 should they be faced
with an emergency.
The
budgets of states that were once manufacturing
powerhouses have also been hurt, calling into
question their ability to meet pension
obligations. The benefits of jobs offshoring
were concentrated on a small group of corporate
executives and shareholders and are dwarfed by
the massive external costs of jobs offshoring on
the US economy and work force.
Robotics will make the situation far worse. The
smart people so happily working on replacement
of humans in the work force are in fact stupid.
They are destroying the social system. Tariffs
cannot protect jobs lost to robots. Moreover,
robots don’t buy houses, furniture, cars,
clothes, entertainment, food, drink, smart
phones, computers. All the money saved by
replacing people with robots is not available to
purchase the products made by robots. Consumer
demand collapses. The only solution is the
socialization of production that makes all
members of society owners of the output. Even
this is only a partial solution as it leaves
unanswered the question of what people do with
their time and what happens to people who do not
have to work and to develop their capabilities.
Capitalism, despite the claim that it
efficiently allocates resources over time, has a
short-run time horizon—the next quarter’s
profits. Everything about the system is
short-term. We have reached the point at which
executives destroy the company by indebting it
in order to buy back the company’s shares, thus
driving up the stock price and maximizing their
“performance bonuses.”
By
undermining the strength of the economy, the
consequence of short-run profit maximization is
to make the US more belligerent. Plunder becomes
a way of keeping the system afloat. Thus,
hegemony over others becomes a means of
survival.
Matters
are coming to a head in the Trump regime.
Trump’s bullying personality mated with the
belligerence of neoconservative hegemony
produces war in its many forms. The economic
warfare with which Washington is threatening its
vassals can lead to an independent Europe
friendly to Russia.
The
decline in Washington’s hegemonic power is a
prerequisite for the resurrection of the
American economy. When plunder is not an option,
policy has to turn inward. The responsibilities
of corporations have to be restored to include
employees, customers, and communities along with
shareholders. The Sherman Anti-trust Act must be
revived, monopolies dismembered, banks too big
to fail broken up, and offshored production
brought home by taxing corporations according to
whether they produce for the US market at home
or abroad.
Historically, foreign trade was unimportant to
US economic development. A rising middle class
produced a large consumer market that sufficed
for the prosperity of large-scale manufacturing
and industrial enterprises. This prosperous
America was destroyed by globalism. American
revival awaits a new class of leaders devoid of
the hubris of “exceptionalism” who can reject
the role of world bully and focus on the
problems at home.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was
columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News
Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many
university appointments. His internet columns
have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts'
latest books are
The Failure of Laissez Faire
Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West,
How America Was Lost,
and
The Neoconservative Threat to
World Order.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
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