Curiouser and Curiouser!

Curiouser and Curiouser! on pax-americana http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic pax-americana Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb So will it be Pax American style? Mon, 07 Oct 2002 20:55:29 +0100 I don't know who the Atlantla Journal Constitution are, or how biased a source they are, however <A href="http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/0902/29bookman.html">this</A> makes fascinating reading.  Here's a short summary. <UL> <LI>The official story on Iraq has never made sense.</LI> <LI>The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial.</LI> <LI>"Rebuilding America's Defenses," a 2000 report by the Project for the New American Century, listed 27 people as having attended meetings or contributed papers in preparation of the report.</LI> <LI>Among them are six who have since assumed key defense and foreign policy positions in the Bush administration.</LI> <LI>This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman.</LI> <LI>In an interview Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brushed aside that suggestion, noting that the United States does not covet other nations' territory.</LI> <LI>It speaks in blunt terms of what it calls "American internationalism," of ignoring international opinion if that suits U.S. interests.</LI></UL> Does recent American foreign policy seem intelligible now? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000656.html Pax Americana: clearer still Mon, 25 Nov 2002 18:29:37 +0000 <A href="http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-000285/">Covert Iraq oil business</A>. Excellent <A href="http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin112102/chin112102.html" target=_blank>article</A> with many references, by Larry Chin, Online Journal. The U.S. imported 290 million barrels of crude oil from Iraq in 2001, at below market rates, because of U.N. sanctions. The US was "the main market for Iraqi crude" according to the Middle East Economic Survey. It seems a lot like the threatened war is simply an attempt to eliminate Russia, France and China from the competition from the oil there, and to put the U.S. oil companies in complete control of the resources. <A href="http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-000285/">more ></A> [<A href="http://ming.tv/">Ming's Meta Mechanics</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » And Pax Americana becomes clearer still.  I couldn't find it in the article but I'd like to know how much Iraqi oil the UK has imported...</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000849.html "War on Terror Fun Game!" Tue, 26 Nov 2002 22:50:23 +0000 <IMG src="http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2002/11/25/tomo/story.jpg"> (Reprinted with the kind permission of Tom Tomorrow)   http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000861.html Gulf War II: This time it's for the economy Fri, 07 Feb 2003 11:38:59 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-000538/">Dollars, Euros and Oil</A>. Excellent article by Ciln Nunan: "<A href="http://www.feasta.org/energy.htm" target=_blank>Oil, Currency and the War on Iraq</A>". It seems to have disappeared from the site, so I'll include it at the bottom as well. Fascinating explanation of some major economic mechanisms involving dollars and euros and oil. A very big reason that the United States is such an economically and militarily dominating country is apparently that U.S. dollar is the de facto world reserve currency. Lots of things are counted in dollars and some goods are only sold for dolars. That means that foreign governments and corporations and banks are keeping large dollar reserves. That essentially amounts to a huge loan the rest of the world is giving to the United States, which will subsidize the U.S. economy. In order to acquire those dollars, the rest of the world has to provide goods and services for those dollars. That allows the U.S. to have a huge import/export imbalance. Last November, 48% more imports than exports. It would be untennable for any other country to run such a deficit.Next major point is that one of the reasons everybody has to have dollars is that the OPEC oil producting countries only accept dollars for oil. Well, not all of them. The only one that does something different is Iraq, which only accepts Euros for their oil, since 2000. And Iran is considering it as well. And the thing is that it might just as well be Euros that everybody used as a reserve currency. It would apparently be a better choice in many ways, because the European economies are more balanced, and the OPEC countries would end up getting more value for their oil. So, now, what would happen if Euros became the only choice for buying oil? Most likely the U.S. economy would plunge, because it would no longer be subsidized in that manner. And EU would probably be quite happy being subsidized in its place. Anybody thinks all this might have something to do with the great urgency to take over Iraq? And why would Britain support it? <A href="http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-000538/">more ></A> [<A href="http://ming.tv/">Ming the Mechanic</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> Well now... isn't this interesting.  I found it worth reading the whole article to get a clearer understanding of the economics (not a subject I have a strong grasp on). If the economic beans make five then this is by far the most credible rationale I've heard for America & Britain going to war with Iraq.  Presumably an American puppet state in Iraq would swiftly switch back to the mighty $$ for oil deals.  Also with a large US presence next door Iran might think twice about undermining the US economy. From my perspective I would like to see the UK join the Euro.  Presumably at that point we'd join France and Germany in opposing the war.  Doubtless we would claim more honourable "pacificsm" related reasons than just not caring about the US economy any more. However what this does show is that Bush has his eye squarely on the domestic economy.  He realises that, if Opec drops the dollar, the US is probably boned. Here is my summary of the article: <UL> <LI>The dollar is the de facto world reserve currency: the US currency accounts for approximately two thirds of all official exchange reserves.</LI> <LI>In addition, all IMF loans are denominated in dollars.</LI> <LI>But the more dollars there are circulating outside the US, or invested by foreign owners in American assets, the more the rest of the world has had to provide the US with goods and services in exchange for these dollars.</LI> <LI>The dollars cost the US next to nothing to produce, so the fact that the world uses the currency in this way means that the US is importing vast quantities of goods and services virtually for free.</LI> <LI>Since so many foreign-owned dollars are not spent on American goods and services, the US is able to run a huge trade deficit year after year without apparently any major economic consequences.</LI> <LI>One of the stated economic objectives, and perhaps the primary objective, when setting up the euro was to turn it into a reserve currency to challenge the dollar so that Europe too could get something for nothing.</LI> <LI>Not only would they lose a large part of their annual subsidy of effectively free goods and services, but countries switching to euro reserves from dollar reserves would bring down the value of the US currency.</LI> <LI>Imports would start to cost Americans a lot more and as increasing numbers of those holding dollars began to spend them, the US would have to start paying its debts by supplying in goods and services to foreign countries, thus reducing American living standards.</LI> <LI>There is though one major obstacle to this happening: oil.</LI> <LI>Oil is not just by far the most important commodity traded internationally, it is the lifeblood of all modern industrialised economies.</LI> <LI>If on the other hand OPEC were to decide to accept euros only for its oil (assuming for a moment it were allowed to make this decision), then American economic dominance would be over.</LI> <LI>Not only would Europe not need as many dollars anymore, but Japan which imports over 80% of its oil from the Middle East would think it wise to convert a large portion of its dollar assets to euro assets (Japan is the major subsidiser of the US because it holds so many dollar investments).</LI> <LI>The conversion from trade deficit to trade surplus would have to be achieved at a time when its property and stock market prices were collapsing and its domestic supplies of oil and gas were contracting.</LI> <LI>There is little doubt that this was a deliberate attempt by Saddam to strike back at the US, but in economic terms it has also turned out to have been a huge success: at the time of Iraq's conversion the euro was worth around 83 US cents but it is now worth over $1.05.</LI> <LI>As oil production is now in decline in most oil producing countries, the importance of the remaining large oil producers, particularly those of the Middle East, is going to grow and grow in years to come.</LI></UL>   http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001135.html Peaceniks guide to the Middle East Fri, 07 Feb 2003 12:18:05 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://www.megnut.com/archive.asp?which=2003_02_01_archive.inc#002554">A dove's guide</A>. Over the the (UK) Times <A href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-152-561996,00.html">A dove's guide: how to be an honest critic of the war</A> by Matthew Parris makes some very good points about possible war with Iraq. "[T]o our doves' hearts' content, we may make sport with the arguments of Bush and Blair. But when the mockery dies away do we not have to ask ourselves one awkward little remaining question? What if the undeclared major premise is true? What if the weaponry is there, just as Washington and London believed all along?" [via <A href="http://www.nickdenton.org">Nick</A>] [<A href="http://www.megnut.com/">megnut</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> Paris finishes his peace with the words: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> I  do not think that the war, if there is a war, will fail. I can easily envisage the publication soon of some chilling facts about Saddams armoury, a French and German scamper back into the fold, a tough UN second resolution, a short and successful war, a handover to a better government, a discreet change of tune in the biddable part of the Arab world, and egg all over the peaceniks faces. I am not afraid that this war will fail. I am afraid that it will succeed. I am afraid that it will prove to be the first in an indefinite series of American interventions. I am afraid that it is the beginning of a new empire: an empire that I am afraid Britain may have little choice but to join. </BLOCKQUOTE> and I agree on all points. US forces can always win this war, provided the US public can accept the casualties and the potential bloodbath that may result in street-to-street combat Grozny style.  In my darker moments I also believe that a successful occupation of Iraq could be the beginning of Pax Americana. Where I disagree with Paris is in his dismissal of oil as a motivator for the struggle in Iraq. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001139.html Do more harm than good? Thu, 27 Feb 2003 12:04:03 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants. There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, "dizzy with success," to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals. F.A. Hayek via <A href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/hayek.html">Lew Rockwell</A></BLOCKQUOTE> Good words to think on. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001224.html It's simply about power Wed, 19 Mar 2003 15:51:49 +0000 It's simply about power. I keep reading comments on the upcoming war. It's about oil. It's about freedom. It's about terror. It's about a nasty dictator. It's about business. It's going to be easy to win. Unfortunately I'm now convinced that it's somehow much simpler than that. It's about power. And about lack of power. The U.S. feel that they can establish a new kind of imperialism to the world and that all existing international organizations, leftovers from the last century, are not needed anymore (if not to clean things up once they're done). Only Europe, as a friend od the US, could have opposed this imperialism. But we failed. Right after September 11 the US were leading the largest coalition of countries ever seen. Now, whatever the US administration is saying, they are going to a war alone. Even in the countries officially supporting this war (Italy is one of them), very large majorities of the population are strongly against it. There's something terribly wrong about all this. [<A href="http://paolo.evectors.it/">Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog</A>] http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001308.html