"There is nothing to fear but fear itself" proclaimed FDR shortly after he assumed office. How right he was! We, American people, have been led to heightened fear since the barbaric inside Job of 9/11 and on that fear we allowed our imperial presidents, GWB and BO, to bring our country to far greater loss than occurred a decade ago. Not the first such inculcation of fear by our treacherous presidents! We were persuaded to fear Communists in our State Department, Cubans 90 miles off Florida, Guatemalan efforts at democracy at modest land reform, similar national movements in Iran, in Vietnam and in Chile. Each such fear has brought us many consequences, some to this day, in US casualties and lost treasure. Now in Afghanistan and Iraq. Meanwhile, our militarism and violations of international law have given other nations valid reason to fear us. China does not have warships in the Caribbean; none reported so far. But we have warships that steam in the South China Sea.
China has not had a history of expansionism far beyond border disputes. The US certainly has had such a history, especially since 1898. Yet, we fear the Chinese! What irony! The Chinese are beating us economically. They have no reason to engage us. If they have a hostile intention, they can just sit back and watch us destroying ourselves through our international warring and financial profligacy.
Maybe FDR's declaration needs to be updated to "We have nothing to fear but ourselves."
Innocent Victim of American Imperialism..., utter corruption of the ZOG and the infamous White House Murder INC.
Much-celebrated Nixon-Kissinger embrace of China to counter Soviet Union in 1972 has come back to haunt The United States.
Afterall China was a pariah country in the world just like today’s North Korea until Nixon’s 1972 visit. All the West European and East Asian countries stayed away from China following the US lead until 1972 and embraced China after Nixon’s visit. While US would not give MFN status to Soviet Union (remember Jackson-Vanik amendment?) unless Russia shed Communism, it had no problem giving it to China’s Communist dictators with a capitalist mask. Trade with China expanded by leaps and bounds during 12 years of Republican rule beginning in 1981. After campaigning against butchers of Beijing in 1992 elections, even Bill Clinton became enthusiastic supporter of trade with China once he took lessons in foreign policy from Nixon in early 1993 during a special Whitehouse-arranged meeting. US also promoted China to a super power status by accepting it as a permanent UNSC member.
Had it not been for that Nixon embrace in 1972, China’s rise to super power status would have been far more slower with all the US, West European and East Asian markets closed to cheap Chinese products. Had it not been for that Nixon embrace, China’s technological progress would have been far slower in the absence of West’s technology transfers. Had it not been for that Nixon embrace, China’s military progress would have been far slower in the absence of huge forex reserves that China accumulated from the massive exports of cheap Chinese products and China used those forex reserves to acquire latest military technology.
Now China has U. S. by the tail - U. S. businesses are hooked to huge profits that cheap Chinese products generate for them as a walk through any Wal-Mart, Sears, Home Depot and Macy’s filled with cheap Chinese goods prove and the U. S. government is hooked to huge investments that China makes in U. S. treasury bills from the sales of cheap Chinese products to U. S. businesses. It is a win-win for China and loose-loose for U. S. in this free trade. It has been said as a joke that if U. S. ever goes to war with China, U. S. would have to ask China to send boots for U. S. soldiers to go and fight against Chinese soldiers!
If capitalist U. S. had an upper hand against Communist Soviet Union in the first cold war, then creditor China has an upper hand against debtor U. S. in this second cold war.
Little could Mao or Deng have imagined that by wearing a capitalist mask, their followers will beat capitalists at their own game. Lenin used to say that ’capitalists will sell us the ropes with which we will hang them’. With West selling such proverbial ropes in the form of technology transfers, Chinese Communists have proven that Lenin saying quite prophetic....
That since 1972, indeed since 1964, the US has wasted American lives and resources on wars and imperial projections of power cannot be blamed on China. Back even further, China cannot be blamed for responding with force, after warnings to the US, to Douglas McArthur's march towards the Yalu River. What is haunting the US are decades of arrogant militarism by its leaders, imperial overstretch as recognized in the writing of Paul Kennedy and, later, by Chalmers Johnson.
Not only our arrogant militarism but our corrupted leaders' subservience to American corporations by entering into trade agreements that resulted in the dismantling of our basic industries and the attrition of the US middle-class. Instead of making our own consumer goods, we became the chief exporter of arms and allowed the Pentagon to fasten its grip on the US economy by becoming a principal supporter of communities and employment throughout our country. Martel cannot blame China for those choices.
At the same time, we became the foremost source of terrorism in the world, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Before fall of the Berlin Wall, we had achieved milestones in terrorism in Central, South America, and Asia by toppling legitimate, elected governments and by supporting regimes that murdered their own peoples. The hatred and blow-back that now haunt us from those crimes by our government cannot be blamed on improvements in US-China relations.
With all his emphasis on China, Martel would have us forget that during the 1960s, before Nixon, we were already importing large numbers of Volkswagens, Datsuns, Hondas, Volvos and Renaults, because US capitalists refused to innovate to meet not only changing domestic demand but the demands of the export market. American manufacturers were just as arrogant as the US foreign policy establishment.
Martel refers to "the butchers in Beijing". Does he doubt that our leaders in Washington are butchers to families in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Does Martel think that it is China's fault that the US makes wars on borrowed money? Is China less trapped by its vaults filled with US Treasury notes and bonds than the US is on made in China goods? Borrow a few dollars, and your lender has the upper hand. Borrow hundreds of billions of dollars and you dominate your lender. I think China is doing what it can to free itself of its dollar dependence. Are we withdrawing from our costly global bases and military commitments in favor of rebuilding our domestic economy and reducing our borrowing from China?
With the economies of western Europe and the US threatened by sovereign debt defaults in the PIGS, I don't think the Chinese (or anyone else) would proudly wear a capitalist mask, these days. Capitalism ultimately means the corruption of governments for the benefit of corporate interests; it means the withering of civil liberties and the wedding of corporations and government. It is called corporatism, a precursor to fascism....
See:
http://www.raceforiran.com/americas-quixotic-quest-for-hegemony-in-the-middle-east
Earlier this week, Flynt spoke at a New America Foundation event, “Beyond Primacy Rethinking American Grand Strategy and the Command of the Commons,” which can be watched by clicking on the video embedded above.
Flynt responded to a paper presented by two MIT doctoral students proposing a new American military posture. Flynt’s remarks focus on the foreign policy context for defense policy decisions; he argues that until the United States abandons its quixotic and counterproductive pursuit of hegemony in place like the Middle East, it will not be possible for Washington to take rational decisions about America’s military posture and defense policy.
For those who want to go directly to Flynt’s remarks, fast forward to around the 30.33 mark on the video....
