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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 548
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WCL 548 February 2007
Rogue states(men)
The revelation that George W. Bush actually gave permission for a vice-presidential aide to betray an official secret is another piece of evidence of the bizarre failure of the small man to live up to the size of his job. The popular opinion, outside the circle of his fervid supporters, is that he is uneducated, near-illiterate and crass. Such damning opinions may be wrong, but when contradicted by friends of Bush such as Tony Blair, they remain resonant and to many Britons, convincing.
The political menu offered to the world may be in the name of George W. Bush but it bears all the hallmarks of George Orwell’s vision. The homespun honesty of the American pioneers and their virtues of self-reliance and openness have been replaced. We now have the intrigues and machinations of the gang of rogues who have surround the current president: Cheyney, Rumsfield, Bolton, Rove, Wolfovitz, Perle and their friends. Deeply sinister, up to their eyes in most of the skullduggery that constitutes U.S. foreign policy of the 20th and 21st centuries, they are a threat to the world and a threat to America itself.
That threat is currently directed toward Iran, a suitable candidate for violent treatment. There are said to be 130 American bases around the world today, varying in size from the smallest, which may be very modest, to the sections of large islands, such as the east end of Cuba, which contains the illegal prison of Guantanamo Bay; and the island of Diego Garcia, where a British government after unlaawfully ejecting the inhabitants to make way for the U.S. air base later used to attack Iraq and other places is now trying to wriggle out of the British judicial condemnation of that scandal.
The modern colonialism practised by the United States has long ceased to be merely a carefully camouflaged support for loyal allies and appears more and more the naked exercise of dominant military power that has been trumpeted as essential by the “neo-conservatives” of the modern Republican party. That party was once the bastion of the splendid isolationists, who shunned “entanglement in foreign wars”. Nowadays the U.S. sees a necessity to supervise all wars, feeding or slowing them according to presumed American national interests.
From 1898, when the first avowed steps to create an overseas empire were taken, until the 21st century, when the illegal war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was begun, the U.S. progressed steadily into global dominance. Until 1945 it was usually reactive, seeking control for fear of other states becoming too close or too powerful, as with the Monroe Doctrine warning Europeans not to interfere in South America. But in the last few years it has become an explicit doctrine of global supremacy, to be adopted no matter what opposition, political or military, may be encountered.
But there is one saving factor. This gang has proved to be not only corrupt but extraordinarily incompetent. The Bush administration, having cut taxes for its richer friends, and achieving enormous waste and corruption in Iraq, is presiding over a record financial deficit that may yet derail its political plans. The plutocracy that has replaced American democracy is too greedy to establish an efficient system of financial management of the sort needed to administer a vast empire and a huge industrial society. Instead it is relying on business to run on behalf of government as well as for itself.
The dangers of such a strategy have been illustrated by the looting of Iraq that took place at the time of the invasion and in the succeeding two years. Money from Iraqi oil revenues was squandered by means of contracts granted without scrutiny to U.S. firms. The corruption in the United States was typified by the greatest of all scams - Enron - but there has been no tally yet of its offshoots in Iraq.
The ‘Pax Americana’ which is offered to the world by the world’s self-appointed policeman is a self-serving and corrupt system whereby the monopolists who control the chief wealth of the United States and its subsidiaries in all parts of the world can exercise a continuing control of the main sources of raw materials and markets for U.S. manufactures. The needs and interests of the peoples of the lands thus policed are all subordinated to the guiding direction of the U.S. rulers, with manipulation of the financial and the political agencies.
All empires collapse sooner or later. The Americans are being very foolish to ignore the changes that are coming. India is already of the size of China and both those countries - or sub-continents – are en route to becoming competitors of the United States in ways that there will be no overcoming – size of population. But China is already stacking up a credit balance that could cause an American financial crisis; and India could become a leader in computing and innovation to astonish American business. It looks to be a tight call - which will ruin the world first, global warming or the corruption of the present world system?
Where does this leave world citizens? A world that revolves around nation-states is not designed to benefit the citizens. And empires are based on power; none are really concerned with democracy. But when empires quarrel, they often destroy each other and sometimes both go down together. Meanwhile, the Domesday Clock is ticking towards the final moments. Should we leave the rogues in power?
John Roberts
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