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THE AMERICAN HEGEMONY: THE NEOCONSERVATIVE THREAT TO INTERNATIONAL ORDER
CounterPunch
March 4 2015
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Last week I was invited to address an important conference of the
Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Scholars from Russia and from
around the world, Russian government officials, and the Russian people
seek an answer as to why Washington destroyed during the past year
the friendly relations between America and Russia that President
Reagan and President Gorbachev succeeded in establishing. All of
Russia is distressed that Washington alone has destroyed the trust
between the two major nuclear powers that had been created during the
Reagan-Gorbachev era, trust that had removed the threat of nuclear
armageddon. Russians at every level are astonished at the virulent
propaganda and lies constantly issuing from Washington and the Western
media. Washington's gratuitous demonization of the Russian president,
Vladimir Putin, has rallied the Russian people behind him. Putin has
the highest approval rating ever achieved by any leader in my lifetime.
Washington's reckless and irresponsible destruction of the trust
achieved by Reagan and Gorbachev has resurrected the possibility of
nuclear war from the grave in which Reagan and Gorbachev buried it.
Again, as during the Cold War the specter of nuclear armageddon stalks
the earth.
Why did Washington revive the threat of world annihilation? Why is
this threat to all of humanity supported by the majority of the US
Congress, by the entirety of the presstitute media, and by academics
and think-tank inhabitants in the US, such as Motyl and Weiss, about
whom I wrote recently?
It was my task to answer this question for the conference. You can
read my February 25 and February 26 addresses below. But first
you should understand what nuclear war means. You can gain that
understanding here.
The Threat Posed to International Relations By The Neoconservative
Ideology of American Hegemony,
Address to the 70th Anniversary of the Yalta Conference, Hosted
by Institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Moscow State
Institute of International Relations, Moscow, February 25, 2015, Hon.
Paul Craig Roberts
Colleagues,
What I propose to you is that the current difficulties in the
international order are unrelated to Yalta and its consequences,
but have their origin in the rise of the neoconservative ideology in
the post-Soviet era and its influence on Washington's foreign policy.
The collapse of the Soviet Union removed the only constraint
on Washington's power to act unilaterally abroad. At that time
China's rise was estimated to require a half century. Suddenly the
United States found itself to be the Uni-power, the "world's only
superpower." Neoconservatives proclaimed "the end of history."
By the "end of history" neoconservatives mean that the competition
between socio-economic-political systems is at an end. History
has chosen "American Democratic-Capitalism." It is Washington's
responsibility to exercise the hegemony over the world given to
Washington by History and to bring the world in line with History's
choice of American democratic-capitalism.
In other words, Marx has been proven wrong. The future does not belong
to the proletariat but to Washington.
The neoconservative ideology raises the United States to the unique
status of being "the exceptional country," and the American people
acquire exalted status as "the indispensable people."
If a country is "the exceptional country," it means that all other
countries are unexceptional. If a people are "indispensable," it means
other peoples are dispensable. We have seen this attitude at work in
Washington's 14 years of wars of aggression in the Middle East. These
wars have left countries destroyed and millions of people dead, maimed,
and displaced. Yet Washington continues to speak of its commitment to
protect smaller countries from the aggression of larger countries. The
explanation for this hypocrisy is that Washington does not regard
Washington's aggression as aggression, but as History's purpose.
We have also seen this attitude at work in Washington's disdain
for Russia's national interests and in Washington's propagandistic
response to Russian diplomacy.
The neoconservative ideology requires that Washington maintain its
Uni-power status, because this status is necessary for Washington's
hegemony and History's purpose.
The neoconservative doctrine of US world supremacy is most clearly
and concisely stated by Paul Wolfowitz, a leading neoconservative who
has held many high positions: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense,
Director of Policy Planning US Department of State, Assistant Secretary
of State, Ambassador to Indonesia, Undersecretary of Defense for
Policy, Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank.
In 1992 Paul Wolfowitz stated the neoconservative doctrine of American
world supremacy:
"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival,
either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere,
that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the
Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new
regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent
any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would,
under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power."
For clarification, a "hostile power" is a country with an independent
policy (Russia, China, Iran, and formerly Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi,
Assad).
This bold statement struck the traditional American foreign policy
establishment as a declaration of American Imperialism. The document
was rewritten in order to soften and disguise the blatant assertion of
supremacy without changing the intent. These documents are available
online, and you can examine them at your convenience.
Softening the language allowed the neoconservatives to rise to
foreign policy dominance. The neoconservatives are responsible for the
Clinton regime's attacks on Yugoslavia and Serbia. Neoconservatives,
especially Paul Wolfowitz, are responsible for the George W. Bush
regime's invasion of Iraq. The neoconservatives are responsible for
the overthrow and murder of Gaddafi in Libya, the assault on Syria,
the propaganda against Iran, the drone attacks on Pakistan and Yemen,
the color revolutions in former Soviet Republics, the attempted
"Green Revolution" in Iran, the coup in Ukraine, and the demonization
of Vladimir Putin.
A number of thoughtful Americans suspect that the neoconservatives
are responsible for 9/11, as that event gave the neoconservatives the
"New Pearl Harbor" that their position papers said was necessary in
order to launch their wars for hegemony in the Middle East. 9/11 led
directly and instantly to the invasion of Afghanistan, where Washington
has been fighting since 2001. Neoconservatives controlled all the
important government positions necessary for a "false flag" attack.
Neoconservative Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who
is married to another neoconservative, Robert Kagan, implemented and
oversaw Washington's coup in Ukraine and chose the new government.
The neoconservatives are highly organized and networked,
well-financed, supported by the print and TV media, and backed by
the US military/security complex and the Israel Lobby. There is no
countervailing power to their influence on US foreign power.
The neoconservative doctrine goes beyond the Brzezinski doctrine,
which dissented from Detente and provocatively supported dissidents
inside the Soviet empire. Despite its provocative character, the
Brzezinski doctrine remained a doctrine of Great Power politics and
containment. It is not a doctrine of US world hegemony.
While the neoconservatives were preoccupied for a decade with their
wars in the Middle East, creating a US Africa Command, organizing
color revolutions, exiting disarmament treaties, surrounding Russia
with military bases, and "pivoting to Asia" to surround China with
new air and naval bases, Vladimir Putin led Russia back to economic
and military competence and successfully asserted an independent
Russian foreign policy.
When Russian diplomacy blocked Washington's planned invasion of
Syria and Washington's planned bombing of Iran, the neoconservatives
realized that they had failed the "first objective" of the Wolfowitz
Doctrine and had allowed "the re-emergence of a new rival . . . on
the territory of the former Soviet Union" with the power to block
unilateral action by Washington.
The attack on Russia began. Washington had spent $5 billion over a
decade creating non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine
and cultivating Ukrainian politicians. The NGOs were called into
the streets. The extreme nationalists or nazi elements were used
to introduce violence, and the elected democratic government was
overthrown. The intercepted conversation between Victoria Nuland and
the US ambassador in Kiev, in which the two Washington operatives
choose the members of the new Ukrainian government, is well known.
If the information that has recently come to me from Armenia and
Kyrgyzstan is correct, Washington has financed NGOs and is cultivating
politicians in Armenia and the former Soviet Central Asian Republics.
If the information is correct, Russia can expect more "color
revolutions" or coups in other former territories of the Soviet Union.
Perhaps China faces a similar threat in Uyghurstan.
The conflict in Ukraine is often called a "civil war." This is
incorrect. A civil war is when two sides fight for the control of the
government. The break-away republics in eastern and southern Ukraine
are fighting a war of secession.
Washington would have been happy to use its coup in Ukraine to
evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base as this would have been a
strategic military achievement. However, Washington is pleased that
the "Ukraine crisis" that Washington orchestrated has resulted in the
demonization of Vladimir Putin, thus permitting economic sanctions
that have disrupted Russia's economic and political relations with
Europe. The sanctions have kept Europe in Washington's orbit.
Washington has no interest in resolving the Ukrainian situation. The
situation can be resolved diplomatically only if Europe can achieve
sufficient sovereignty over its foreign policy to act in Europe's
interest instead of Washington's interest.
The neoconservative doctrine of US world hegemony is a threat to the
sovereignty of every country. The doctrine requires subservience to
Washington's leadership and to Washington's purposes. Independent
governments are targeted for destabilization. The Obama regime
overthrew the reformist government in Honduras and currently is at
work destabilizing Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina, and
most likely also Armenia and the former Central Asian Soviet Republics.
Yalta and its consequences have to do with Great Power rivalries. But
in the neoconservative doctrine, there is only one Great Power-the
Uni-power. There are no others, and no others are to be permitted.
Therefore, unless a moderate foreign policy arises in Washington and
displaces the neoconservatives, the future is one of conflict.
It would be a strategic error to dismiss the neoconservative ideology
as unrealistic. The doctrine is unrealistic, but it is also the guiding
force of US foreign policy and is capable of producing a world war.
In their conflict with Washington's hegemony, Russia and China are
disadvantaged. The success of American propaganda during the Cold
War, the large differences between living standards in the US and
those in communist lands, overt communist political oppression, at
times brutal, and the Soviet collapse created in the minds of many
people nonexistent virtues for the United States. As English is the
world language and the Western media is cooperative, Washington is
able to control explanations regardless of the facts. The ability
of Washington to be the aggressor and to blame the victim encourages
Washington's march to more aggression.
This concludes my remarks. Tomorrow I will address whether there
are domestic political restraints or economic restraints on the
neoconservative ideology.
Paul Craig Roberts, Address to the 70th Anniversary of the Yalta
Conference, Moscow, February 26, 2015
Colleagues,
At the plenary session yesterday I addressed the threat that the
neoconservative ideology poses to international relations. In this
closing session I address whether there are any internal restraints
on this policy from the US population and whether there are economic
restraints.
Just as 9/11 served to launch Washington's wars for hegemony in the
Middle East, 9/11 served to create the American police state. The
Constitution and the civil liberties it protects quickly fell to
the accumulation of power in the executive branch that a state of
war permitted.
New laws, some clearly pre-prepared such as the PATRIOT Act, executive
orders, presidential directives, and Department of Justice memos
created an executive authority unaccountable to the US Constitution
and to domestic and international law.
Suddenly Americans could be detained indefinitely without cause
presented to a court. Habeas corpus, a constitutional protection
which prohibits any such detention, has been set aside.
Suddenly people could be tortured into confessions in violation of
the right against self-incrimination and in violation of domestic
and international laws against torture.
Suddenly Americans and Washington's closest allies could be spied on
indiscriminately without the need of warrants demonstrating cause.
The Obama regime added to the Bush regime's transgressions the
assertion of the right of the executive branch to assassinate US
citizens without due process of law.
The police state was organized under a massive new Department of
Homeland Security. Almost immediately whistleblower protections,
freedom of the press and speech, and protest rights were attacked
and reduced.
It was not long before the director of Homeland Security declared that
the department's focus has shifted from Muslim terrorists to "domestic
extremists," an undefined category. Anyone can be swept into this
category. Homes of war protesters were raided and grand juries were
convened to investigate the protesters. Americans of Arab descent who
donated to charities-even charities on the State Department's approved
list-that aided Palestinian children were arrested and sentenced to
prison for "providing material support to terrorism."
All of this and more, including police brutality, has had a chilling
effect on protests against the wars and the loss of civil liberty.
The rising protests from the American population and from soldiers
themselves that eventually forced Washington to end the Vietnam War
have been prevented in the 21st century by the erosion of rights,
intimidation, loss of mobility (no-fly list), job dismissal, and other
heavy-handed actions inconsistent with a government accountable to
law and the people.
In an important sense, the US has emerged from the "war on terror"
as an executive branch dictatorship unconstrained by the media and
barely, if at all, constrained by Congress and the federal courts. The
lawlessness of the executive branch has spread into governments
of Washington's vassal states and into the Federal Reserve, the
International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, all of
which violate their charters and operate outside their legal powers.
Jobs offshoring destroyed the American industrial and manufacturing
unions. Their demise and the current attack on the public employee
unions has left the Democratic Party financially dependent on the same
organized private interest groups as the Republicans. Both parties now
report to the same interest groups. Wall Street, the military/security
complex, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and the extractive industries
(oil, mining, timber) control the government regardless of the party in
power. These powerful interests all have a stake in American hegemony.
The message is that the constellation of forces preclude internal
political change.
Hegemony's Achilles heel is the US economy. The fairy tale of American
economic recovery supports America's image as the safe haven, an image
that keeps the dollar's value up, the stock market up, and interest
rates down. However, there is no economic information that supports
this fairy tale.
Real median household income has not grown for years and is below
the levels of the early 1970s. There has been no growth in real
retail sales for six years. The labor force is shrinking. The labor
force participation rate has declined since 2007 as has the civilian
employment to population ratio. The 5.7 percent reported unemployment
rate is achieved by not counting discouraged workers as part of the
work force. (A discouraged worker is a person who is unable to find
a job and has given up looking.)
A second official unemployment rate, which counts short-term
(less than one year) discouraged workers and is seldom reported,
stands at 11.2 percent. The US government stopped including long-term
discouraged workers (discouraged for more than one year) in 1994. If
the long-term discouraged are counted, the current unemployment rate
in the US stands at 23.2 percent.
The offshoring of American manufacturing and professional service
jobs such as software engineering and Information Technology has
decimated the middle class. The middle class has not found jobs with
incomes comparable to those moved abroad. The labor cost savings
from offshoring the jobs to Asia has boosted corporate profits, the
performance bonuses of executives and capital gains of shareholders.
Thus all income and wealth gains are concentrated in a few hands at
the top of the income distribution. The number of billionaires grows
as destitution reaches from the lower economic class into the middle
class. American university graduates unable to find jobs return to
their childhood rooms in their parents' homes and work as waitresses
and bartenders in part-time jobs that will not support an independent
existence.
With a large percentage of the young economically unable to form
households, residential construction, home furnishings, and home
appliances suffer economic weakness. Cars can still be sold only
because the purchaser can obtain 100 percent financing in a six-year
loan. The lenders sell the loans, which are securitized and sold
to gullible investors, just as were the mortgage-backed financial
instruments that precipitated the 2007 US financial crash.
None of the problems that created the 2008 recession, and that
were created by the 2008 recession, have been addressed. Instead,
policymakers have used an expansion of debt and money to paper over
the problems. Money and debt have grown much more than US GDP, which
raises questions about the value of the US dollar and the credit
worthiness of the US government. On July 8, 2014, my colleagues and
I pointed out that when correctly measured, US national debt stands
at 185 percent of GDP.
This raises the question: Why was the credit rating of Russia, a
country with an extremely low ratio of debt to GDP, downgraded and not
that of the US? The answer is that the downgrading of Russian credit
worthiness was a political act directed against Russia in behalf of
US hegemony.
How long can fairy tales and political acts keep the US house of
cards standing? A rigged stock market. A rigged interest rate. A
rigged dollar exchange value, a rigged and suppressed gold price. The
current Western financial system rests on world support for the US
dollar and on nothing more.
The problem with neoliberal economics, which pervades all countries,
even Russia and China, is that neoliberal economics is a tool of
American economic imperialism, as is Globalism. As long as countries
targeted by Washington for destabilization support and cling to
the American doctrines that enable the destabilization, the targets
are defenseless.
If Russia, China, and the BRICS Bank were willing to finance Greece,
Italy, and Spain, perhaps those countries could be separated from
the EU and NATO. The unraveling of Washington's empire would begin.
Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury
and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts' How the
Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic
format. His latest book is How America Was Lost.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/04/the-neoconservative-threat-to-international-order/
From: A. Papazian
CounterPunch
March 4 2015
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Last week I was invited to address an important conference of the
Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Scholars from Russia and from
around the world, Russian government officials, and the Russian people
seek an answer as to why Washington destroyed during the past year
the friendly relations between America and Russia that President
Reagan and President Gorbachev succeeded in establishing. All of
Russia is distressed that Washington alone has destroyed the trust
between the two major nuclear powers that had been created during the
Reagan-Gorbachev era, trust that had removed the threat of nuclear
armageddon. Russians at every level are astonished at the virulent
propaganda and lies constantly issuing from Washington and the Western
media. Washington's gratuitous demonization of the Russian president,
Vladimir Putin, has rallied the Russian people behind him. Putin has
the highest approval rating ever achieved by any leader in my lifetime.
Washington's reckless and irresponsible destruction of the trust
achieved by Reagan and Gorbachev has resurrected the possibility of
nuclear war from the grave in which Reagan and Gorbachev buried it.
Again, as during the Cold War the specter of nuclear armageddon stalks
the earth.
Why did Washington revive the threat of world annihilation? Why is
this threat to all of humanity supported by the majority of the US
Congress, by the entirety of the presstitute media, and by academics
and think-tank inhabitants in the US, such as Motyl and Weiss, about
whom I wrote recently?
It was my task to answer this question for the conference. You can
read my February 25 and February 26 addresses below. But first
you should understand what nuclear war means. You can gain that
understanding here.
The Threat Posed to International Relations By The Neoconservative
Ideology of American Hegemony,
Address to the 70th Anniversary of the Yalta Conference, Hosted
by Institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Moscow State
Institute of International Relations, Moscow, February 25, 2015, Hon.
Paul Craig Roberts
Colleagues,
What I propose to you is that the current difficulties in the
international order are unrelated to Yalta and its consequences,
but have their origin in the rise of the neoconservative ideology in
the post-Soviet era and its influence on Washington's foreign policy.
The collapse of the Soviet Union removed the only constraint
on Washington's power to act unilaterally abroad. At that time
China's rise was estimated to require a half century. Suddenly the
United States found itself to be the Uni-power, the "world's only
superpower." Neoconservatives proclaimed "the end of history."
By the "end of history" neoconservatives mean that the competition
between socio-economic-political systems is at an end. History
has chosen "American Democratic-Capitalism." It is Washington's
responsibility to exercise the hegemony over the world given to
Washington by History and to bring the world in line with History's
choice of American democratic-capitalism.
In other words, Marx has been proven wrong. The future does not belong
to the proletariat but to Washington.
The neoconservative ideology raises the United States to the unique
status of being "the exceptional country," and the American people
acquire exalted status as "the indispensable people."
If a country is "the exceptional country," it means that all other
countries are unexceptional. If a people are "indispensable," it means
other peoples are dispensable. We have seen this attitude at work in
Washington's 14 years of wars of aggression in the Middle East. These
wars have left countries destroyed and millions of people dead, maimed,
and displaced. Yet Washington continues to speak of its commitment to
protect smaller countries from the aggression of larger countries. The
explanation for this hypocrisy is that Washington does not regard
Washington's aggression as aggression, but as History's purpose.
We have also seen this attitude at work in Washington's disdain
for Russia's national interests and in Washington's propagandistic
response to Russian diplomacy.
The neoconservative ideology requires that Washington maintain its
Uni-power status, because this status is necessary for Washington's
hegemony and History's purpose.
The neoconservative doctrine of US world supremacy is most clearly
and concisely stated by Paul Wolfowitz, a leading neoconservative who
has held many high positions: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense,
Director of Policy Planning US Department of State, Assistant Secretary
of State, Ambassador to Indonesia, Undersecretary of Defense for
Policy, Deputy Secretary of Defense, President of the World Bank.
In 1992 Paul Wolfowitz stated the neoconservative doctrine of American
world supremacy:
"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival,
either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere,
that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the
Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new
regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent
any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would,
under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power."
For clarification, a "hostile power" is a country with an independent
policy (Russia, China, Iran, and formerly Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi,
Assad).
This bold statement struck the traditional American foreign policy
establishment as a declaration of American Imperialism. The document
was rewritten in order to soften and disguise the blatant assertion of
supremacy without changing the intent. These documents are available
online, and you can examine them at your convenience.
Softening the language allowed the neoconservatives to rise to
foreign policy dominance. The neoconservatives are responsible for the
Clinton regime's attacks on Yugoslavia and Serbia. Neoconservatives,
especially Paul Wolfowitz, are responsible for the George W. Bush
regime's invasion of Iraq. The neoconservatives are responsible for
the overthrow and murder of Gaddafi in Libya, the assault on Syria,
the propaganda against Iran, the drone attacks on Pakistan and Yemen,
the color revolutions in former Soviet Republics, the attempted
"Green Revolution" in Iran, the coup in Ukraine, and the demonization
of Vladimir Putin.
A number of thoughtful Americans suspect that the neoconservatives
are responsible for 9/11, as that event gave the neoconservatives the
"New Pearl Harbor" that their position papers said was necessary in
order to launch their wars for hegemony in the Middle East. 9/11 led
directly and instantly to the invasion of Afghanistan, where Washington
has been fighting since 2001. Neoconservatives controlled all the
important government positions necessary for a "false flag" attack.
Neoconservative Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who
is married to another neoconservative, Robert Kagan, implemented and
oversaw Washington's coup in Ukraine and chose the new government.
The neoconservatives are highly organized and networked,
well-financed, supported by the print and TV media, and backed by
the US military/security complex and the Israel Lobby. There is no
countervailing power to their influence on US foreign power.
The neoconservative doctrine goes beyond the Brzezinski doctrine,
which dissented from Detente and provocatively supported dissidents
inside the Soviet empire. Despite its provocative character, the
Brzezinski doctrine remained a doctrine of Great Power politics and
containment. It is not a doctrine of US world hegemony.
While the neoconservatives were preoccupied for a decade with their
wars in the Middle East, creating a US Africa Command, organizing
color revolutions, exiting disarmament treaties, surrounding Russia
with military bases, and "pivoting to Asia" to surround China with
new air and naval bases, Vladimir Putin led Russia back to economic
and military competence and successfully asserted an independent
Russian foreign policy.
When Russian diplomacy blocked Washington's planned invasion of
Syria and Washington's planned bombing of Iran, the neoconservatives
realized that they had failed the "first objective" of the Wolfowitz
Doctrine and had allowed "the re-emergence of a new rival . . . on
the territory of the former Soviet Union" with the power to block
unilateral action by Washington.
The attack on Russia began. Washington had spent $5 billion over a
decade creating non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine
and cultivating Ukrainian politicians. The NGOs were called into
the streets. The extreme nationalists or nazi elements were used
to introduce violence, and the elected democratic government was
overthrown. The intercepted conversation between Victoria Nuland and
the US ambassador in Kiev, in which the two Washington operatives
choose the members of the new Ukrainian government, is well known.
If the information that has recently come to me from Armenia and
Kyrgyzstan is correct, Washington has financed NGOs and is cultivating
politicians in Armenia and the former Soviet Central Asian Republics.
If the information is correct, Russia can expect more "color
revolutions" or coups in other former territories of the Soviet Union.
Perhaps China faces a similar threat in Uyghurstan.
The conflict in Ukraine is often called a "civil war." This is
incorrect. A civil war is when two sides fight for the control of the
government. The break-away republics in eastern and southern Ukraine
are fighting a war of secession.
Washington would have been happy to use its coup in Ukraine to
evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base as this would have been a
strategic military achievement. However, Washington is pleased that
the "Ukraine crisis" that Washington orchestrated has resulted in the
demonization of Vladimir Putin, thus permitting economic sanctions
that have disrupted Russia's economic and political relations with
Europe. The sanctions have kept Europe in Washington's orbit.
Washington has no interest in resolving the Ukrainian situation. The
situation can be resolved diplomatically only if Europe can achieve
sufficient sovereignty over its foreign policy to act in Europe's
interest instead of Washington's interest.
The neoconservative doctrine of US world hegemony is a threat to the
sovereignty of every country. The doctrine requires subservience to
Washington's leadership and to Washington's purposes. Independent
governments are targeted for destabilization. The Obama regime
overthrew the reformist government in Honduras and currently is at
work destabilizing Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina, and
most likely also Armenia and the former Central Asian Soviet Republics.
Yalta and its consequences have to do with Great Power rivalries. But
in the neoconservative doctrine, there is only one Great Power-the
Uni-power. There are no others, and no others are to be permitted.
Therefore, unless a moderate foreign policy arises in Washington and
displaces the neoconservatives, the future is one of conflict.
It would be a strategic error to dismiss the neoconservative ideology
as unrealistic. The doctrine is unrealistic, but it is also the guiding
force of US foreign policy and is capable of producing a world war.
In their conflict with Washington's hegemony, Russia and China are
disadvantaged. The success of American propaganda during the Cold
War, the large differences between living standards in the US and
those in communist lands, overt communist political oppression, at
times brutal, and the Soviet collapse created in the minds of many
people nonexistent virtues for the United States. As English is the
world language and the Western media is cooperative, Washington is
able to control explanations regardless of the facts. The ability
of Washington to be the aggressor and to blame the victim encourages
Washington's march to more aggression.
This concludes my remarks. Tomorrow I will address whether there
are domestic political restraints or economic restraints on the
neoconservative ideology.
Paul Craig Roberts, Address to the 70th Anniversary of the Yalta
Conference, Moscow, February 26, 2015
Colleagues,
At the plenary session yesterday I addressed the threat that the
neoconservative ideology poses to international relations. In this
closing session I address whether there are any internal restraints
on this policy from the US population and whether there are economic
restraints.
Just as 9/11 served to launch Washington's wars for hegemony in the
Middle East, 9/11 served to create the American police state. The
Constitution and the civil liberties it protects quickly fell to
the accumulation of power in the executive branch that a state of
war permitted.
New laws, some clearly pre-prepared such as the PATRIOT Act, executive
orders, presidential directives, and Department of Justice memos
created an executive authority unaccountable to the US Constitution
and to domestic and international law.
Suddenly Americans could be detained indefinitely without cause
presented to a court. Habeas corpus, a constitutional protection
which prohibits any such detention, has been set aside.
Suddenly people could be tortured into confessions in violation of
the right against self-incrimination and in violation of domestic
and international laws against torture.
Suddenly Americans and Washington's closest allies could be spied on
indiscriminately without the need of warrants demonstrating cause.
The Obama regime added to the Bush regime's transgressions the
assertion of the right of the executive branch to assassinate US
citizens without due process of law.
The police state was organized under a massive new Department of
Homeland Security. Almost immediately whistleblower protections,
freedom of the press and speech, and protest rights were attacked
and reduced.
It was not long before the director of Homeland Security declared that
the department's focus has shifted from Muslim terrorists to "domestic
extremists," an undefined category. Anyone can be swept into this
category. Homes of war protesters were raided and grand juries were
convened to investigate the protesters. Americans of Arab descent who
donated to charities-even charities on the State Department's approved
list-that aided Palestinian children were arrested and sentenced to
prison for "providing material support to terrorism."
All of this and more, including police brutality, has had a chilling
effect on protests against the wars and the loss of civil liberty.
The rising protests from the American population and from soldiers
themselves that eventually forced Washington to end the Vietnam War
have been prevented in the 21st century by the erosion of rights,
intimidation, loss of mobility (no-fly list), job dismissal, and other
heavy-handed actions inconsistent with a government accountable to
law and the people.
In an important sense, the US has emerged from the "war on terror"
as an executive branch dictatorship unconstrained by the media and
barely, if at all, constrained by Congress and the federal courts. The
lawlessness of the executive branch has spread into governments
of Washington's vassal states and into the Federal Reserve, the
International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, all of
which violate their charters and operate outside their legal powers.
Jobs offshoring destroyed the American industrial and manufacturing
unions. Their demise and the current attack on the public employee
unions has left the Democratic Party financially dependent on the same
organized private interest groups as the Republicans. Both parties now
report to the same interest groups. Wall Street, the military/security
complex, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and the extractive industries
(oil, mining, timber) control the government regardless of the party in
power. These powerful interests all have a stake in American hegemony.
The message is that the constellation of forces preclude internal
political change.
Hegemony's Achilles heel is the US economy. The fairy tale of American
economic recovery supports America's image as the safe haven, an image
that keeps the dollar's value up, the stock market up, and interest
rates down. However, there is no economic information that supports
this fairy tale.
Real median household income has not grown for years and is below
the levels of the early 1970s. There has been no growth in real
retail sales for six years. The labor force is shrinking. The labor
force participation rate has declined since 2007 as has the civilian
employment to population ratio. The 5.7 percent reported unemployment
rate is achieved by not counting discouraged workers as part of the
work force. (A discouraged worker is a person who is unable to find
a job and has given up looking.)
A second official unemployment rate, which counts short-term
(less than one year) discouraged workers and is seldom reported,
stands at 11.2 percent. The US government stopped including long-term
discouraged workers (discouraged for more than one year) in 1994. If
the long-term discouraged are counted, the current unemployment rate
in the US stands at 23.2 percent.
The offshoring of American manufacturing and professional service
jobs such as software engineering and Information Technology has
decimated the middle class. The middle class has not found jobs with
incomes comparable to those moved abroad. The labor cost savings
from offshoring the jobs to Asia has boosted corporate profits, the
performance bonuses of executives and capital gains of shareholders.
Thus all income and wealth gains are concentrated in a few hands at
the top of the income distribution. The number of billionaires grows
as destitution reaches from the lower economic class into the middle
class. American university graduates unable to find jobs return to
their childhood rooms in their parents' homes and work as waitresses
and bartenders in part-time jobs that will not support an independent
existence.
With a large percentage of the young economically unable to form
households, residential construction, home furnishings, and home
appliances suffer economic weakness. Cars can still be sold only
because the purchaser can obtain 100 percent financing in a six-year
loan. The lenders sell the loans, which are securitized and sold
to gullible investors, just as were the mortgage-backed financial
instruments that precipitated the 2007 US financial crash.
None of the problems that created the 2008 recession, and that
were created by the 2008 recession, have been addressed. Instead,
policymakers have used an expansion of debt and money to paper over
the problems. Money and debt have grown much more than US GDP, which
raises questions about the value of the US dollar and the credit
worthiness of the US government. On July 8, 2014, my colleagues and
I pointed out that when correctly measured, US national debt stands
at 185 percent of GDP.
This raises the question: Why was the credit rating of Russia, a
country with an extremely low ratio of debt to GDP, downgraded and not
that of the US? The answer is that the downgrading of Russian credit
worthiness was a political act directed against Russia in behalf of
US hegemony.
How long can fairy tales and political acts keep the US house of
cards standing? A rigged stock market. A rigged interest rate. A
rigged dollar exchange value, a rigged and suppressed gold price. The
current Western financial system rests on world support for the US
dollar and on nothing more.
The problem with neoliberal economics, which pervades all countries,
even Russia and China, is that neoliberal economics is a tool of
American economic imperialism, as is Globalism. As long as countries
targeted by Washington for destabilization support and cling to
the American doctrines that enable the destabilization, the targets
are defenseless.
If Russia, China, and the BRICS Bank were willing to finance Greece,
Italy, and Spain, perhaps those countries could be separated from
the EU and NATO. The unraveling of Washington's empire would begin.
Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury
and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts' How the
Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic
format. His latest book is How America Was Lost.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/04/the-neoconservative-threat-to-international-order/
From: A. Papazian