By John Chan, wsws.org
When will the criminal leadership of the United States stop tempting fate and risking or provoking wars in every corner of the planet? When will the American public wake up to this intolerable nonsense? 

In a move that has heightened tensions with Japan and the United States, the Chinese Defence Ministry announced over the weekend the creation of an “air defence identification zone” (ADIZ), covering much of the East China Sea, including the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands that have been at the center of a bitter dispute between Beijing and Tokyo.

The air defence zone announced by China overlaps Japan’s own ADIZ. The Obama administration immediately criticised the Chinese move and indicated that the US would ignore the Chinese zone. Washington reiterated that the US-Japan Security Treaty will apply if war breaks out between China and Japan over the disputed East China Sea islands.

Underscoring the potentially explosive implications of the Chinese announcement, the Chinese air force sent early warning aircraft and fighters on a sweep of the defence zone, prompting Japan to scramble its own F-15 fighters.

Any aircraft entering the ADIZ will trigger alerts to the Chinese air force and air defence system. According to the Chinese Defence Ministry statement, aircraft are expected to provide their flight plans, indicate their nationality, and maintain radio communication.

“China’s armed forces will adopt defensive emergency measures to respond to aircraft that do not cooperate in the identification or refuse to follow the instructions,” the statement added.

The move came less than two weeks after the idea was leaked to the media by the Chinese military. It is a response to the growth of military tensions in the region, precipitated by the Obama administration’s so-called “pivot to Asia,” which is centrally aimed at diplomatically and militarily isolating and encircling China and checking its challenge to American dominance in East and South Asia. A central aspect of the “pivot” is support for Japan’s re-militarisation.

As part of this anti-Chinese strategy, Washington has worked to stoke up long-simmering territorial disputes in the East China and South China seas between China and nearby countries such as Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Japan has for some time maintained its own air defence zone in the region, resulting in the frequent scrambling of Japanese fighter jets against Chinese aircraft flying over international airspace near the Okinawa island chain. The Japanese government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has even threatened to shoot down Chinese drones, prompting warnings from Beijing that it would consider such a development an “act of war.”

In a statement, the Japanese Foreign Ministry declared the Chinese air defence zone to be “totally unacceptable and extremely regrettable, as it includes the Japanese territorial airspace over the Senkaku Islands, an inherent territory of Japan.” The statement continued: “Unilaterally establishing such airspace and restricting flights in the area is extremely dangerous, as it may lead to miscalculation in the area.” Japan lodged a protest with China, which Beijing promptly rejected.

Just a week ago, Japan concluded a large-scale military exercise in the Okinawa region, employing both land-based anti-ship missiles and 350 warplanes to stimulate an attack on Chinese ships. Two weeks prior to that, a major Chinese naval exercise in the same region, the “Mobile 5,” simulated penetrating the “First Island Chain,” which stretches from Japan to Okinawa, Taiwan and the Philippines. The exercise also included maneuvers on the high seas against a potential enemy fleet.

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday denounced the establishment of the Chinese ADIZ, saying, “The United States is deeply concerned about China’s announcement that they’ve established an ‘East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone.’” He declared that the US and its allies had the right to “freedom of flight” and “freedom of navigation”, which practically is to deploy warships or aircraft just outside of China’s territorial waters and airspace.

“We urge China not to implement its threat to take action against aircraft that do not identify themselves or obey orders from Beijing,” Kerry continued, as “freedom of over-flight and other internationally lawful uses of sea and airspace are essential to prosperity, stability, and security in the Pacific.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has close connections with the military, has in recent months ordered Chinese forces to apply the same right to “freedom of flight” to Japan and to regions near US military bases in East Asia. Chinese military aircraft have with increasing frequency been using international airspace near the Okinawa island chain to enter the West Pacific.

Chinese electronic surveillance ships reportedly appeared in waters near Hawaii for the first time to collect communications data from the US Pacific Fleet.

China has never previously maintained an ADIZ, even though the US and allies such as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea have had such systems in place for decades. After having invested enormous resources to establish a modern air force, the Chinese regime now considers the establishment of such a defence zone a military necessity.

China announced the air zone only one day after it test-flew its Sharp Sword stealth drone bomber, making it the fourth country to develop such technology after the US, France and Britain.

The Pentagon reacted aggressively to the Chinese ADIZ announcement. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel reiterated the official position that the US-Japan security alliance covers the Senkaku islands. This implies that the United States would automatically become involved on the side of Japan if a war broke out with China. “We view this development as a destabilising attempt to alter the status quo in the region,” Hagel warned Beijing.

Hagel insisted the US would simply ignore the rules China proclaimed for its air defence zone. “This announcement by the People’s Republic of China will not in any way change how the United States conducts military operations in the region,” he said.

If the American military proceeds on the basis proclaimed by Hagel, the risk will increase of confrontations, clashes or outright war between the US and China.

Now hear this, now hear this…! This is NOT a joke…

When kids play war, they end up spending less time shooting than arguing: “You’re dead!” “Am not! You missed!” It just gets worse the bigger the kids. I remember a D & D’er crying when his character got killed — wouldn’t talk to the rest of us for years, still grieving for his dead elf.

 

The War Nerd
By Gary Brecher 
The  (From the archives, originally published 11 December 2002)

The US military has been having exactly this kind of argument, played out in the world press, since last August. They’re even whinier and more of a pain about it than D&Ders, if you can believe that, with leaks and counter-leaks, planted stories, and plenty of good ol’ character assassination.

It all comes out of the “Millenium Challenge ’02” war games we staged in the Persian Gulf this summer. The big scandal was that the Opposing Force Commander, Gen. Paul van Riper, quit mid-game because the games were rigged for the US forces to win. The scenario was a US invasion of an unnamed Persian Gulf country (either Iraq or Iran). The US was testing a new hi-tech joint force doctrine, so naturally van Riper used every lo-tech trick he could think of to mess things up. When the Americans jammed his CCC network , he sent messages by motorbike.

[pullquote] Wherein satirist and serious war analyst Gary Brecher (a pseudonym) lays out the reasons why bullying a determined second-tier power like Iran might be a very bad idea for the US Navy, and why conventional armadas are now obsolete. Ironically, it is this reality—never discussed by the media— that may make the Joint Chiefs cautious when taking on adversaries with the requisite resources to strike back. Even low tech assets in the hands of a good tactical commander can quickly become deadly.  However, there’s a Catch-22 in this new situation. The US is the kind of country that doesn’t accept a humiliating defeat. The implicit rule is: You mess with my conventional forces and I’ll probably go medieval on you.  Nukes, anyone? [/pullquote]

But that was just playing around. They wouldn’t have minded that. Might’ve even congratulated van Ripen, bought him a drink for his smarts, at the post-games party.

The truth is that van Riperdid something so important that I still can’t believe the mainstream press hasn’t made anything of it. With nothing more than a few “small boats and aircraft,” van Riper  managed to sink most of the US fleet in the Persian Gulf.

What this means is as simple and plain as a skull: every US Navy battle group, every one of those big fancy aircraft carriers we love, won’t last one single day in combat against a serious enemy.

The Navy brass tried to bluff it out, but they were pretty lame about it. They just declared the sunken ships “refloated” so the game could go on as planned. This is the kind of word-game that makes the military look so damn dumb. Too bad Bonaparte never thought of that after Trafalgar: “My vleete, she is now reflotte!” Too bad Phillip didn’t demand a refloat after the Armada went down: “Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK?”

Everybody in this story has an agenda-starting with the retired USMC General named Paul K. van Riper, the hero of the story for most readers. Even the Army Times, when it broke the story, admitted that van Riper has a reputation as an “asshole” who has a grudge against hi-tech scenarios like the one the military was testing. He also has a reputation as a guy who lives for the chance to make the brass look bad in war games.

SIDEBAR
Patrice Greanville
_______________________________________
I suppose some antiwar activists will be heartened by Gary Brecher’s analysis: it suggests that the power of Uncle Sam to bully and meddle at will anywhere it pleases and with total impunity may be coming to an end. That would be the good news, even if the waste in US treasury is staggering. For if the author is correct then trillions of dollars of naval advantage—the American ability to project offensive power across the globe via surface ships—is about to melt faster than a stick of butter in the Atacama desert.  Supposedly all it takes is a determined, militarily adroit power with the capacity and courage to use simpler, far less costly weapons—like the Exocet anti-ship missile, or swarms of torpedo boats, for example—against colossal enemies, and then stand its ground. An act sure to invite total annihilation.

Granted, there are not many nations willing to take that sort of risk, but there are enough out there which, when sufficiently hurt and humiliated, may decide to pick up the gauntlet. If so, then what? America and Israel are death averse, but the world is now full of nations in which death is not a big deal. This changes the equation somewhat. A lot of US invasions and bullying are premised on the notion that the targets will be incapable of responding in kind, or simply will not dare to do so. Yet those we might call the crazily brave present the world with a new type of scenario. One in which it’s no longer a duel between overwhelming non-nuke superiority vs. conventional assets. It’s a duel between overwhelming non-nuke superiority vs. conventional assets and Pandora’s box. Let’s look at this more closely.

First, let’s assume that, as Van Riper showed, a country like Iran, after a series of brutal, large-scale provocations, chooses to respond, some would say suicidally, and ends up sinking a bunch of mighty vessels in the American armada including one of the carriers leading the strike force. Here the wild card of challenging America enters the picture: sick, off-the-charts chauvinism. We’re not talking hardware any more. 

Americans are not accustomed to paying in blood the full price for their victories.  WW2 was the last war that cost us a respectable number of soldiers, about 400,000, and we still got out of that conflict with the smallest casualty rate of all combatants, along with the Brits who only lost approximately 450,000. Of course, I’m not trying to put a price on human life, an impossible task. Merely point out the levels of bloodshed and destruction suffered by different war parties, and how these may have affected their psyche.

While most Americans in the home front went through the war unscathed, with a few inconveniences like rationing, the rest of the world went through hell.  The Soviets—who really broke the back of the German armies—lost over 28 million people, the combined population of Texas and California at the time. Think about it for a minute. We throw a war and every single person in California and Texas dies. It’s mind-boggling. China lost between 10 and 20 million (no one knows for sure, though most historians agree 10 million is a very conservative figure). Even little Czechoslovakia (a country in 1938 with just about 10 million in population) lost almost 400,000, our level of loss. Yugoslavia, with 15 million bled to the tune of over a million. Germany, despite fighting in practically all fronts, lost between seven and 9 million (these figures combine military and civilian deaths).  Japan, the nation which actually started the world war in the East in 1936, by smashing into Manchuria, lost between 2.5 and 3.5 million, a bargain by vanquished aggressor standards. So the Brits and the Americans actually paid the lowest tribute to the Gods of World War II.

In the postwar, when US imperialism, using anticommunism as a pretext, finally began to flex its muscles, the ratio of US military casualties to inflicted losses among the supposedly commie-infested populations soon became well-nigh ridiculous. Self-righteousness, always a big component of American chauvinism, shot sky-high. And racism also played its part in stoking the fires of savagery. Philip Slater in his classic The Pursuit of Loneliness relates how during the Vietnam War American pilots operating in the Mekong delta, pretty much a free-fire zone, were often shocked and incensed by any show of resistance. Total impunity had become the default mental attitude in that crowd. In one such case, after capriciously turning a peasant’s water buffalo into a huge cloud of red mist, the man picked up an old single action rifle, probably WWI vintage, and took aim at the assaulting planes. He was summarily vaporized for his audacity, but he managed to make an impression on the attackers. As the old French chestnut has it, in the eyes of the pilots he was a naughty, insolent little beast:

Cet animal est fort méchant,
Quand on l’attaque il se défend

By 1975, when Vietnamese fighters finally succeeded in kicking the Americans out, the devastation—human and ecological— throughout Indochina was extreme. The stats tell the story eloquently:

Total number of U.S. soldiers deployed to Vietnam	536,100
Total number of U.S. casualties in the Vietnam War	58,220
Total number of U.S. soldiers wounded in the Vietnam War	303,644
Total military casualties from both sides	1.475 million
Total wounded from both sides	2.094 million
Total civilian casualties from both sides	4 million

Let’s translate these data into ratios:

For each US soldier killed, 30 Vietnamese combatants died;
For each US wounded, 7 enemy combatants fell;
For each US civilian casualty, about 160 Indochinese died.
Since that time the casualty ratios have become even more steeply lopsided in favor of the home team. In the First Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm—1990-1), the stats showed between 20,000 and 35,000 Iraqi military killed, and more than 75,000 wounded, while the almost 1-million strong “coalition forces” (the actual fighting borne mostly by the US military) sustained all of 482 KIA, with 44 killed by friendly fire. That’s a favorable ratio better than 1 to 73, and am probably underestimating. [SOURCE: STATISTICBRAIN.COM ]

But let’s go back to the situation we were sketching earlier. Iran—in a surprising counterattack— sends to the bottom 75% of the American fleet operating in the Persian Gulf theater. That’s thousands of sailors and airmen and trillions of dollars down the drain, in a few days, maybe hours. For a culture accustomed to pinprick losses, that’s beyond shocking, it’s cataclysmic. Can anyone imagine what the American media and the standing chorus of professional patriots and demented, mawkish right-wingers who pollute this nation’s communications would do with a disaster like that? The screams for revenge, for the total annihilation of Iran, would be deafening. And with the kind of politicians and whorish media we have, who’s to say that such a green light wouldn’t be given? (Let’s not even factor here what Israel —the wildest card of all—might do in such a situation. They could be the first to unleash the nukes.)

You get what I’m driving at? In our little story high-tech meets low-tech and low-tech kicks butt. As far as the musclebound superpower Navy is concerned, they suffer a humiliating blow. But that still leaves overwhelming air power and the strategic Navy—the nuclear submarine fleet—a lot harder to knock off.  That’s pretty bad news for the momentary victor but it gets worse. The mad genie is now out of the bottle. For, as suggested above, in today’s world the worst threat to human and planetary survival is the deeply entrenched, carefully cultivated, blistering American chauvinism. We live in an immature culture marinated in ignorance and poisoned by jingoism. Perhaps other nations can match us in these unenviable qualities. And it’s probably a safe bet that in chauvinism alone the Argentines, the Chileans, the Israelis, the French, the Pakis, and scores of other nations might even surpass us. But they lack the means at this point to turn the planet or any specific nation into a pile of radioactive ash. We don’t. That’s why America’s curdled narcissism and its aggressive, sociopathic business culture are such a peril in our time. And why victories against such a power will take a lot of maneuvering and good luck to survive. 

—PG

______________________

But that’s what a good opposing commander is supposed to do. This van Riper may be an asshole, but then most good generals are. Patton wasn’t somebody you’d want to be stuck in an elevator with. Rommel was worse; there’s a story about how one morning in the desert Rommel announced to his staff officers, “Today is Christmas. We will now celebrate. Hans, how is your wife? Hermann, how is your wife?” and without waiting for his officers, to answer, Rommel said, “That was Christmas. Now-get out the maps.”

And whatever agenda van Riper had, do you really think the brass who “refloated” the ships he sunk are any more objective? Their careers are all riding on the success of this operation and they’ve got just as much reason to lie or fudge the results.

The story just got dirtier as it bounced around the web. The gullible types who believe everything the Pentagon tells them, decided to trust the brass — van Riper was just a troublemaker. The paranoid types, the ones who think the CIA controls the weather, took it for granted that the whole war games were fixed from the start.

A lot of the arguments came down to the question of what war games like Millennium Challenge are about. Trusting war-nerds were saying on the web, “Well, the whole POINT of war games is to show up weaknesses! So naturally when van Riper sank the ships, they made a note and restarted the games!”

It’s a nice idea, but kinda naive. Most war games aren’t neutral at all. They’re supposed to showcase a new weapon or doctrine. Millennium Challenge was supposed to showcase high-tech joint-force doctrine. So when van Riper sank the fleet, you can bet that the guys running it didn’t just say, “Well played, old boy! We must make a note of your tactics in order to avert such mishaps in the future!”

What most casual readers won’t get is that some of van Riper’s moves are chickenshit, and don’t amount to anything-but others are so damn scary that the US Navy will be trying to live them down for years.

That trick of sending messages by motorbike is a good example of a move that gets lots of publicity and sounds smart but doesn’t mean much. OK, you send your messages by bike. For starters, that means they move at 30 mph, unlike radio messages, which are almost instant. That’s a huge disadvantage. And what happens if your biker gets strafed? No message-or a captured message. I’d be happy to fight an army that had nothing better than motorbikes to communicate with.

But what van Riper did to the US fleet…that’s something very different. He was given nothing but small planes and ships-fishing boats, patrol boats, that kind of thing. He kept them circling around the edges of the Persian Gulf aimlessly, driving the Navy crazy trying to keep track of them. When the Admirals finally lost patience and ordered all planes and ships to leave, van Riper had them all attack at once. And they sank two-thirds of the US fleet.

That should scare the hell out of everybody who cares about how well the US is prepared to fight its next war. It means that a bunch of Cessnas, fishing boats and assorted private craft, crewed by good soldiers and armed with anti-ship missiles, can destroy a US aircraft carrier. That means that the hundreds of trillions (yeah, trillions) of dollars we’ve invested in shipbuilding is wasted, worthless.

A few years ago, a US submarine commander said, “There are two kinds of ship in the US Navy: subs and targets.” The fact that big surface ships are dinosaurs is something that’s gotten clearer every decade since 1921.

That was the year Billy Mitchell finally got the chance to prove what he’d been saying for years: large surface ships without air cover had no chance against aircraft. Mitchell had made himself the most hated man in the Armed Forces for saying this, but he wouldn’t shut up. Finally, thanks to the huge surplus of military vessels left over from WW I, he got his chance. A German battleship, the Ostfriesland, and three surplus US battleships were anchored off Virginia to see what Mitchell’s rickety little biplanes could do to them. You have to remember how big and tough these “dreadnoughts” seemed to people back then. They had the thickest armor, the biggest guns, the deadliest reps of any weapon on land or sea. The idea that aircraft could sink them was a joke for most people. Of course, the Navy brass knew, and tried everything to stop the tests. They knew all too well what was going to happen–and it wasn’t good for their careers.

The little biplanes buzzed out…and sank every ship. First a destroyer, then the huge German battleship, then all three US battleships. The Navy tried to ignore the results, but with Mitchell yapping at their heels, they finally started moving from battleship-based to aircraft-carrier-based battle groups.

The British didn’t pay any attention to Mitchell’s demonstration. Their battleships were better made, better armed, and better manned. With an impregnable British stronghold in Singapore and the RN patrolling offshore, what could those little Jap monkeys do?

Three days after Pearl Harbor, the British found out. A powerful battle group led by the battleship Prince of Wales and the Cruiser Repulse steamed out to oppose Japanese landings in Malaysia, and ran into several squadrons of Japanese planes. In a few minutes both ships were sinking, The Prince of Wales sank so fast virtually the entire crew went down with her. With its Naval screen gone, Singapore the Impregnable fell so fast the British still can’t talk about it.

What the battleship was in 1941, the aircraft carrier is now: a big, proud, expensive…sitting duck.Aircraft carriers came out of WW II looking powerful, but that was before microchips. Now, when an enemy tanker can fire 60 self-guiding cruise missiles from hundreds of miles away, no carrier will survive its first real battle.

Carriers are not only the biggest and most expensive ships ever built–they’re the most vulnerable. Because even one serious cruise-missile hit means the carrier can’t launch its planes, its best weapons. They will sink to the bottom with their crews, not having fired a shot.

That was the real lesson of Millennium Challenge II. And that’s what has the Navy so furious at van Riper: he blew their cover. He showed all the hicks back home that the carrier battle fleet can be sunk by “small planes and boats.” As weapons become smaller and deadlier, big targets just won’t survive.

The signs have been there all along. In the Falklands War, the Argentine Air Force, which ain’t exactly the A Team, managed to shred the British fleet, coming in low and fast to launch the Exocets. And they did all this hundreds of miles off their coast, with no land-based systems to help.

If the Argentines could do that with 1980 technology, think what the Chinese, Iranians or North Koreans could do in 2003 against a city-size floating target like a US carrier.

If your local library has copies of Jane’s Weapons Systems, check out the anti-ship missile section. The top of the line in standard weaponry might still be the old US Harpoon, but you don’t need anything that fancy. Anti-ship missiles are easy to make and use, because surface ships are very slow, have huge radar signatures, and can’t dodge.

We may be lucky a little while longer, as long as we take on losers like Iraq. But what about Iran? The Iranians aren’t cowardly slaves like the Iraqis. They’re smart, they’re dedicated, and they hate us like poison. Imagine how many “small aircraft and boats” there are along the Iranian coastline. Imagine every one of those craft stuffed full of explosives and turned into kamikazes. Now add all the anti-ship missiles the Iranians have been able to buy on the open market. If you really want to get scared, add a nuke or two.

Suppose the Iranians use van Riper’s method: send everything at once, from every ship, plane and boat they’ve got, directly at the carrier. Give the Navy the benefit of the doubt and say they get 90% of the incoming missiles. You still end up with a dead carrier.

Now try shifting the scenario to a US-China fight off Taiwan. The Chinese have it all: subs, planes, anti-ship missiles-Hell, they SELL that stuff to other countries! I’ll say it plain: no American carrier would last five minutes in a full-scale naval battle off China.

Let’s go back to that objection some of you are probably raising: “The Navy must’ve thought of all that!” Oh yeah? Why didn’t the British think of it in 1940? There was plenty of evidence that battleships were nothing but giant coffins. They just decided not to think about it.

That’s what the US Navy does now. There are careers here, big money, tradition. There’s always been a surface navy; so there’s always got to BE one. That’s about as far as their reasoning gets.

One day we’ll wake up to a second Pearl Harbor. Maybe not this year–fighting a joke like Saddam, the US Navy can probably get away with sending its carriers into the Persian Gulf. But if Iran gets involved, those carriers won’t last one day. If they ever approach the Chinese coast in wartime, they’ll just vanish. If a carrier-based group steams anywhere near the North Korean coast…well, there won’t even be enough left to make a good dive-site.

And the sickest part is that the admirals and the captains and the contractors all know it. Goddamn. Maybe we deserve what’s gonna happen to us. Only thing is, it won’t be the brass who die. It’ll be the poor trusting kids on those carriers who’ll die, the poor suckers who thought they’d get free training and a world tour, or even get the chance to “defend America.” They’ll die not even believing what’s happening to them as the whole giant hulk starts cracking up and sliding into the water.

GARY BRECHER, widely believed to be a nom de plume for itinerant academic John Dolan, was a co-editor and columnist with the satirical political publication The Exile, founded by Mark Ames in Moscow in the 1990s, and later co-edited with Matt Taibbi. 

PATRICE GREANVILLE

It only took the mainstream media several decades to discover Paul Watson’s brave defense of the whales, despite the fact that just about everyone in the animal rights movement and radical conservationism knew of his Sea Shepherd organization’s legendary work since the days it began with the support of visionary leaders like Cleveland Amory, Brigitte Bardot, and others of that caliber. It’s fortunate that Watson’s supporters are the kind of people who have little trouble seeing through the hypocrisy of those who accuse him and his methods of “vigilantism,” of being “violent”, or, as is the fad these days, of being a “terrorist,” —all of which is as ludicrous as it gets considering how easy it is to identify those who really make the wounds.

Courageous, well-informed, and frequent media coverage is the solution, but such coverage should not neutralize its potential good by yielding to the usual “she said, he said” reflex that so many members of the commercial press utilize to pretend professional objectivity. Many issues, as we have often argued in these pages, don’t have two morally valid sides, nor is the truth planted on some mythical midpoint defined by “reasonableness.”  Japan and other cynical marine exploiters are in the wrong in this case. Period. The mantle of legality they claim is only a result of political chicanery and scandalously deficient leadership, something we in the US should know something about.

No common sense in this world

Looking at the record it’s clear that most countries, starting with the United States, which seldom lacks resources to meddle in questionable if not downright criminal ways around the world, have played a largely feckless role in the defense of marine life in general.

To this day, US foreign policy does not include strong support for nor preventive and/ or punitive measures to insure compliance with regulations designed to protect animals from exploitative international trade, be they rhinos, elephants, lions, tigers, sea turtles, endangered birds, or whales, by offending countries across the globe.  (Spain, for example, has one of the largest fleets devoted to sharkfinning to satisfy oriental markets.)  In this as in many other instances the US and similar powers put economic and strategic alliances that benefit a puny minority way ahead of planetary defense, let alone invest public policy with a modicum of morality.

Speaking for myself, and am pretty sure I’m far from alone in this,  I’d much rather see the immense resources of the US deployed to protect the environment and animals instead of being used to advance imperial goals.  It’s a shame, and a reflection of how utterly ridiculous and irrelevant governments have become in regard to urgent issues, that a puny activist flotilla, legally persecuted at that, has to stand up for these victimized cetaceans, and wage risky “whale wars,” while American diplomacy and the great US Navy and similar fleets do less than nothing in this regard. I could go on but I think you get the point. Perhaps some day, after the world has undergone a true revolution, we will see public moneys spent in an intelligent and compassionate way.

by Stephen Lendman

It’s an idea whose time has come. On October 13, China’s official press agency Xinhua headlined “Commentary: US fiscal failure warrants a de-Americanized world.” More on this below.  Thomas Jefferson once warned:

“If the American people allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied.” 

 

“The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs.”  Money power in private hands doesn’t work. It bears full responsibility for today’s crisis.  Wall Street and other monied interests wreak havoc worldwide. They profit at the expense of ordinary people. They do it ruthlessly. They do it destructively. It’s high time that changed.

A previous article said America has been declining for decades. It’s going the way of all empires.  It’s dying a slow death. Its epitaph one day may read hubris and overreach killed it. Misguided policies don’t work.

Chalmers Johnson called it the same dynamic that doomed past empires – “isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy.”  The “combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, military Keynesianism, and ruinous military expenses have destroyed our republican structure in favor of an imperial presidency.”

America is declining “for the sake of keeping our empire,” Johnson stressed.  In his book titled, “The World in Crisis: The End of the American Century,” historian Gabriel Kolko said America’s decline “began after the Korean War, was continued in relation to Cuba, and was greatly accelerated in Vietnam.”

Immanuel Wallerstein believes America began declining since the 1970s. Post-9/11, it accelerated.  “(T)he economic, political and military factors that contributed to US hegemony are the same (ones) inexorably produc(ing) (America’s) decline,” he said.

On October 15, he headlined “The Samson Complex.”

“We have a lot of putative Samsons these days,” he said. They’re ‘blocking or seeking to block what they consider dangerous ‘compromised.’ ”  Ongoing Washington squabbles are Exhibit A. “It is not hard to show (they’re) pulling the house down, not only on the enemy but on themselves.”

“(T)he temple is crumbling” in plain sight. Wallerstein hopes for transition from today’s world-system to something entirely different. Everything is possible, he says – “possible but far from certain.”

America’s decline reflects a combination of:

• democracy in name only.

Absolute power corrupted America. It’s beyond fixing. A two centuries-long experiment failed.  Benjamin Franklin’s warning went unheeded. He felt hubris might doom the new republic.

“(W)e shall be divided by our little partial, local interests, our projects will be confounded and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down to future ages,” he said. “And, what is worse, mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war, or conquest.”

Today’s America is lawless. It’s belligerent. It’s ruthless at home and abroad. It’s secretive. It’s unaccountable. Incestuous business/government ties exploit people globally for profit.  Monied interests run things. Whatever they want they get. They cycle their executives in and out of government.  They make policy. They buy politicians like toothpaste. They dump those they don’t want.

America is declining. China is rising. It’s heading toward become the world’s largest economy.  Based on purchasing power parity as measured by the cost of a representative basket of goods in one country v. another, the IMF believes it’ll overtake America before 2020.

Xinhua minced no words saying:

“As US politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world.”

Post-WW II, America began “build(ing) a global empire by imposing a postwar world order, fueling recovery in Europe, and encouraging regime-change in nations that it deems hardly Washington-friendly.” It’s “habituated to meddling in the business of other countries and regions far away from its shores.”  At the same time, it “claims the high moral ground yet covertly (does) things that are as audacious as torturing prisoners of war, slaying civilians in drone attacks, and spying on world leaders.”

It “abused its superpower status.” It’s ravaging one country after another. It’s doing so for profit and dominance.   It created chaos “by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies.”   Nations worldwide are “still crawling (their) way out of an economic disaster thanks to the voracious Wall Street elites, while bombings and killings have become virtually daily routines in Iraq years after Washington claimed it has liberated its people from tyrannical rule.”

Bipartisan brinksmanship over the federal budget and debt ceiling “left many nations’ tremendous dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonized.”  China wants “a new world order.” It wants one replacing US hegemony. It wants all nations “hav(ing) their key interests respected and protected on an equal footing.”

“(S)everal cornerstones should be laid to (create) a de-Americanized world.” International law must be respected. So must national sovereignty. No nation has the right to wage war on others unilaterally. World financial reform is vital. Developing economies need more say. Dollar hegemony must end. A “new international reserve currency” must replace it.  Instituting one will free nations worldwide “from the spillover of the intensifying domestic political turmoil in the United States.”

China doesn’t want to toss America aside. It wants to “encourage Washington to play a much more constructive role in addressing global affairs…(B)eltway politicians (should) begin (by) ending (their) pernicious impasse.”

Economist Henry CK Liu believes China’s able to “kick start a new international finance architecture that will serve international trade better.”

Beijing’s able to make the yuan an alternative reserve currency. It can do so “by simply denominating all Chinese exports in yuan. This sovereign action can be undertaken unilaterally” any time China wishes.

The Chinese State Counsel can simply announce all its exports must be paid for in yuan as of a certain date.  It can prohibit domestic exporters from accepting payments in any other currencies.  Doing so “will set off a frantic scramble by importers of Chinese goods around the world to buy yuan at the State Administration for Foreign Exchange (SAFE).”  It’ll make the yuan “a preferred currency with ready market demand.” Henceforth, it’ll be backed by the value of Chinese exports. It’ll become universally accepted in trade.

Its “proper exchange rate can then be set by China not based on exports to (America), but on Chinese conditions.”

Beijing “is on the way to becoming a world economic giant, but it has yet to assert its rightful financial power because of dollar hegemony.”

US dominated neoliberal globalized trade destabilizes conditions worldwide. America’s policy solely serves it superpower status.  It does so to the detriment of other nations. It believes level playing field conditions are verboten.  Trade flows not where it’s most needed in the most equitable way. It’s based on what best serves US interests.

“Neoliberalized globalization (promotes) the illusion that trade is a win-win transaction for all,” says Liu.

For decades, America’s been economically dominant. It controls international lending agencies. The dollar remains the world’s reserve currency.  China isn’t alone balking. In June 2009, Shanghai Cooperation Organization nations led by Beijing and Moscow met in Yekaterinburg, Russia.  Doing so took a first step toward ending dollar hegemony. Discussion focused around replacing it with a single global currency or basket of major ones.  In July 2009, then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recommended a supranational currency. Latin American countries support a regional one.

China wants its yuan protected. Nations are increasingly conducting bilateral trade in their own currencies

Economist Michael Hudson calls dollar hegemony a “sinister dynamic (because) the US payment deficit pumps dollars into foreign economies.”

They have “little option except to buy US (debt) which the Treasury spends on financing an enormous, hostile (global) military build-up.”   Doing so permits endless imperial wars. Foreign US Treasury buyers end up financing their own endangerment.  At the same time, they’re buying depreciating assets. America’s good faith isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

Paul Craig Roberts believes dollar hegemony days are numbered. If it goes, so goes imperial dominance.

China, Russia, other BRICS countries, Latin American ones and others want out from dollar hegemony. It’s just a matter of time before it ends.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.  Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.  It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.