The Descent (of the US)

This is from Rabble. I think this article is completely wrong-headed. The problems of the US empire do not show at all that it is in decline. The US is still by far the greatest military power on earth and it is not pulling back this power but is if anything extending it into new areas and threatens to go even further into an attack on Iran. In many cases the European Union defers to US power. France's new president is pro-US. In countries such as Afghanistan and in the breakup of Yugoslavia the US won with the help of NATO.
The problems of the poor and the decline of worker's power in the US is a sign of success not decline. The US government is controlled primarily in the interests of the most well off. In the US even crime pays for the elites as capitalists have a new niche investment in jails where labor can be exploited and management can be privatised. The unsuccessful wars too become centers of profit for private contractors and arms manufacturers. There is no threatening social movements against the government and even if there were the state has now advanced weapons to quell any significant discontent. The War on Terror has enabled the state to develop these protective weapons and most Americans have not said boo about it since the administration has successfully played upon citizens fear of terrorism.
The credit crunch and the decline of the US dollar are reasons for the US to worry about a decline in its power but problems these issues create are not simply restricted to the US but are Global. If the US suffers a recession then economic giants such as China will suffer as well since exports will decline and even as it is now,declines in the US dollar hurt exports to the US since the dollar buys less and prices of imports will increase.










The descent






>by Duncan Cameron
October 2, 2007

Last week, the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates asked Congress to appropriate $190 billion in new money for 2008, to fund the wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan, $42 billion more than anticipated. Senator Robert Byrd pointed out that this would put the cost of the American invasion of Iraq above $600 billion. It is hard to imagine money more misspent.

The Iraq war has gone on for longer than the First World War, and no end is in sight. Though it is opposed by the Bush administration, the U.S. Senate has approved a bill that would partition Iraq into three states (Kurd, Shiite, and Sunni) supposedly to reduce chaos, and in the hope of facilitating the U.S. withdrawal. In other words, American Senators think the imperial power should get to draw the map, just as the British did when it decided the borders of what is today Iraq.

The descent of the U.S. from its position of unquestioned dominance of world affairs has picked up speed. From the fall of Saigon to the catastrophic failure in Iraq, the tendency has been unmistakable. The U.S. acts to protect its privileges as world leader, and American mistakes and excesses promote the very decline it works to reverse.

In an interview around his recently released memoirs, the ultimate Washington and Republican insider, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan let drop that the Iraq invasion was all about oil. So, the budget allocations of over $600 billion were not about fighting terrorism as Secretary Gates pretended to Congress; the money was actually spent on what most of the world has known the war was about from the beginning: blood for oil.

The Independent reports that the Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein could have been bought off for a mere $1 billion, eliminating the need for the invasion to remove him in the first place.

The decline of the American empire can be seen in the daily life of Americans. Some 10 per cent of the population goes hungry regularly. Of the 20 industrialized nations, in the 1980s the increase in purchasing power of the working population was lowest in the U.S., in the 1990s, it averaged 0.1 per cent—U.S. workers work more hours and have less vacation than workers in other industrialized nations.

On issues such as adult literacy, child mortality, access to health services, the U.S. ranks outside the top forty nations surveyed by the U.N. Meanwhile there is $600 billion for war against Iraq.

For pregnant woman in the U.S., the principal cause of death is murder. The current American president was elected in 2000 by electoral fraud in the state of Florida, and in 2004 by fraud in Ohio. A majority of Americans do not vote.

The arena of international finance is where the U.S. decline is the most telling. The ability to buy abroad, and pay with its own money is what sets the U.S., as the world power, apart from other nations. But, the open line of credit granted to Americans by the rest of the world is now becoming more expensive, because the value of the U.S. dollar is falling against major currencies. As the value of the dollar plummets, interest on foreign loans goes up, and investments abroad become more expensive.

The bundling of doubtful (sub-prime) mortgage loans, and their sale on global markets as securities, by leading U.S. financial institutions, has set off a crisis of international confidence with serious repercussions for the U.S. economy. To offset the damage, the U.S. Federal Reserve eased domestic credit. But, reducing domestic interest rates, simply transfers domestic economic weakness over to the external weakness of the U.S. dollar hastening the international decline of the U.S.

A lower U.S. dollar is an effective form of U.S. protectionism. Canada resorted to the same strategy in the mid-1990s, following the failure of free trade to ignite a manufacturing boom as predicted by its supporters. Low domestic interest rates favour consumer borrowing, not the ability of financial institutions to rebuild their balance sheets. If financial uncertainty persists, interest rates will go up to strengthen U.S. banks and the dollar.

The weak U.S. dollar is simultaneously a cause and a consequence of U.S. decline. Ending the Iraq war will likely require an international coalition of the willing, to tell the next U.S. administration that it must get out, and an American president ready to listen. Beginning an era of wise investment, to replace decades of wasteful military spending, will take much more than a change of government. It will require acknowledgment that the U.S. has to choose between being a democracy, and running an empire.

Duncan Cameron is associate publisher of rabble.ca. He writes from Vancouver.










The descent






>by Duncan Cameron
October 2, 2007

Last week, the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates asked Congress to appropriate $190 billion in new money for 2008, to fund the wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan, $42 billion more than anticipated. Senator Robert Byrd pointed out that this would put the cost of the American invasion of Iraq above $600 billion. It is hard to imagine money more misspent.

The Iraq war has gone on for longer than the First World War, and no end is in sight. Though it is opposed by the Bush administration, the U.S. Senate has approved a bill that would partition Iraq into three states (Kurd, Shiite, and Sunni) supposedly to reduce chaos, and in the hope of facilitating the U.S. withdrawal. In other words, American Senators think the imperial power should get to draw the map, just as the British did when it decided the borders of what is today Iraq.

The descent of the U.S. from its position of unquestioned dominance of world affairs has picked up speed. From the fall of Saigon to the catastrophic failure in Iraq, the tendency has been unmistakable. The U.S. acts to protect its privileges as world leader, and American mistakes and excesses promote the very decline it works to reverse.

In an interview around his recently released memoirs, the ultimate Washington and Republican insider, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan let drop that the Iraq invasion was all about oil. So, the budget allocations of over $600 billion were not about fighting terrorism as Secretary Gates pretended to Congress; the money was actually spent on what most of the world has known the war was about from the beginning: blood for oil.

The Independent reports that the Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein could have been bought off for a mere $1 billion, eliminating the need for the invasion to remove him in the first place.

The decline of the American empire can be seen in the daily life of Americans. Some 10 per cent of the population goes hungry regularly. Of the 20 industrialized nations, in the 1980s the increase in purchasing power of the working population was lowest in the U.S., in the 1990s, it averaged 0.1 per cent—U.S. workers work more hours and have less vacation than workers in other industrialized nations.

On issues such as adult literacy, child mortality, access to health services, the U.S. ranks outside the top forty nations surveyed by the U.N. Meanwhile there is $600 billion for war against Iraq.

For pregnant woman in the U.S., the principal cause of death is murder. The current American president was elected in 2000 by electoral fraud in the state of Florida, and in 2004 by fraud in Ohio. A majority of Americans do not vote.

The arena of international finance is where the U.S. decline is the most telling. The ability to buy abroad, and pay with its own money is what sets the U.S., as the world power, apart from other nations. But, the open line of credit granted to Americans by the rest of the world is now becoming more expensive, because the value of the U.S. dollar is falling against major currencies. As the value of the dollar plummets, interest on foreign loans goes up, and investments abroad become more expensive.

The bundling of doubtful (sub-prime) mortgage loans, and their sale on global markets as securities, by leading U.S. financial institutions, has set off a crisis of international confidence with serious repercussions for the U.S. economy. To offset the damage, the U.S. Federal Reserve eased domestic credit. But, reducing domestic interest rates, simply transfers domestic economic weakness over to the external weakness of the U.S. dollar hastening the international decline of the U.S.

A lower U.S. dollar is an effective form of U.S. protectionism. Canada resorted to the same strategy in the mid-1990s, following the failure of free trade to ignite a manufacturing boom as predicted by its supporters. Low domestic interest rates favour consumer borrowing, not the ability of financial institutions to rebuild their balance sheets. If financial uncertainty persists, interest rates will go up to strengthen U.S. banks and the dollar.

The weak U.S. dollar is simultaneously a cause and a consequence of U.S. decline. Ending the Iraq war will likely require an international coalition of the willing, to tell the next U.S. administration that it must get out, and an American president ready to listen. Beginning an era of wise investment, to replace decades of wasteful military spending, will take much more than a change of government. It will require acknowledgment that the U.S. has to choose between being a democracy, and running an empire.

Duncan Cameron is associate publisher of rabble.ca. He writes from Vancouver.