The Absence of Diplomacy Is Isolating Washington — Paul Craig Roberts
The Absence of Diplomacy Is Isolating Washington
Paul Craig Roberts
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. Madaline
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.
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 interferrence 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 tarrifs will fall not on Chinese
exports but on the offshored production of US corporations. The tarifs
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 characteize 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 quesion 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.
