by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
An emerging foreign policy trend is Cold War II.
The US military/security complex, with help from Obama and Hillary Clinton, is
working overtime to revive the profitable long-term stalemate of the Cold War
that lasted four decades from the Berlin airlift to the Reagan-Gorbachev
accord. During this long period Congress and the public supported an endless
array of weapons systems to deter the “Soviet threat,” which, until President
Richard Nixon’s opening to China in the early 1970s, comprised together with
China the “Communist threat.”
This threat was not all spin. It had an element
of real potential, but the threat was hyped to the limit. In the 1950s in
Atlanta, Georgia, and elsewhere school children were issued military dog tags,
just like the ones GIs would yank off the necks of their dead colleagues in the
war movies, with their blood type in event of a nuclear attack. Some Americans
built bomb shelters on their home properties. Senator Joseph McCarthy led a
witch hunt for communists, and although there were some communists and
communist sympathizers in sensitive positions, McCarthyism had many innocent
victims, just like “the war on terror.”
Anyone with a social conscience was suspect. The
Hollywood blacklist or equivalent suspicion fell upon the likes of Bertolt
Brecht, Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, and Lena Horne. Even Carl Foreman, who
wrote the screenplay for High Noon, the Gary Cooper Western, was blacklisted,
and the stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee, was investigated by the House Committee on
un-American Activities. Even Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the
Manhattan Project and the “father of the atomic bomb” was under investigation
for “left-wing associations” while he developed the first nuclear weapon for
the US government. Oppenheimer was on the FBI’s Custodial Detention Index for
arrest in case of national emergency.
Whether serious or not, the “Soviet threat” was more
real than the “Muslim threat.” The Red Army had defeated Hitler’s previously
undefeated armies. In the aftermath of World War II many believed that only
nuclear weapons could stop the Red Army from overrunning Western Europe. When
the Soviet Union acquired the hydrogen bomb, the public was willing to support
the amounts of military spending and security measures necessary to protect the
West from the Soviet threat.
New Threat Needed
When the Soviet threat disappeared 20 years ago, the
military-security complex was at a loss. A new threat was needed to keep the
money and power flowing into the military-security complex. China wasn’t
an option. Its new leaders were embracing capitalism, and China was on its way
to becoming Washington’s largest foreign creditor. How do you bash your
banker? Moreover, China was welcoming American corporations that had
discovered that it was profitable to produce in China the goods and services
that they sold in US markets. The influential American interests that
were becoming allies with China caused the military-security complex to look
elsewhere for an enemy.
With the help of the neoconservatives, the
military-security complex found the enemy in the Muslim Middle East among the
independent states that were not US puppets.
The Muslim wars of the first and into the second
decade of the 21st century have not been satisfactory replacements for the
“Soviet threat.” There is nothing powerful about Iraq, Afghanistan,
Syria, and Iran comparable to the Soviet Union or even to 1950s Red China,
which fought the US superpower to a standstill in Korea.
The problem with the “war on terror” is that it is a
hot war, not a cold one, that goes on forever. Although expensive and, thereby,
rewarding to the profits and power of the military-security complex, the
problem with hot wars is that when they do go on forever, no one believes you
are a superpower.
Why is it that Superpower America was in Iraq for
eight years and only “won” after putting the insurgents on the US military
payroll and paying them to stop killing American troops? How come after
11 years in Afghanistan the US Superpower and its NATO mercenaries have failed
to subdue the Taliban, a few thousand guys armed with AK-47s? Recently,
the Taliban took over Kabul, the American occupied capital of Afghanistan, and
attacked the Western embassies for several hours. Last week the Taliban
confidently announced its spring offensive against “the invaders.”
Eight- and eleven-year hot wars are definitely
profitable, but when they cannot be won, what happens to the Superpower’s
reputation? What happens to the morale of its armed forces? The evidence
is in: military suicides exceed combat deaths.
To protect its superpower status and morale of the
military, Washington needs a new enemy, an enemy it can hype without coming to
blows. Washington’s first choice was Russia. Washington did everything
possible to provoke Russia. Washington took NATO into Eastern Europe.
Washington unilaterally withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty in June
2002. Since this time, Washington has surrounded Russia with anti-ballistic
missile bases designed to negate Russia’s nuclear deterrent and to make Russia
impotent in the event of US aggression against Russian interests. Washington
sponsored “color revolutions” in former Soviet republics and has attempted to
make Georgia and even Ukraine members of NATO.
It has taken the Russians a long time to understand
that Washington is not a trustworthy ally for peace. Finally, the Russian Chief
of General Staff, Nikolai Makarov said at an international conference on May 3
attended by Washington’s operatives and its NATO puppets that Russia will
preemptively strike the anti-ballistic missile sites “if the situation
worsens.”
Washington has told the Russians the transparent lie
that the anti-missile shield is directed at Iranian nuclear missiles. However,
the Russians understand full well that Iran has no such missiles. In
other words, Washington is doubly provoking Russia by providing an obvious
false reason for its naked aggression against Russia.
It took the Russian government a decade to understand
the American threat. In the meantime, Washington gave up on drawing
Russia into a new cold war and turned to China.
This turn was not completely easy. China had become
Washington’s largest foreign creditor, purchasing with its export earnings the
US Treasury bonds that finance the military-security complex’s profitable
wars. Moreover, China is the site of a number of major US corporations
that produce in China for their US markets.
Starting trouble with China is not without costs.
But costs mean little to the profits of the military
security complex, because the costs are almost entirely external to their own
profits. The costs fall on the population and the world as a whole, not
on the military-security complex.
It is difficult to demonize Russia, as Russia does not
own massive amounts of US debt and does not have large trade surpluses with the
US that can be attributed to “currency manipulation.” The fact that China
pegged its currency to the dollar in order to solidify its value as China
entered world trade allows Washington to claim that China is “manipulating its
currency to America’s disadvantage.”
Cold Warriors Turn To China
China is being constructed into America’s new bogyman,
with Putin in reserve. Once the military-security complex discovered that China
was no longer needed as a creditor, because the Federal Reserve was willing to
assume the role of all creditors and purchase the entirety of the debt issued
to cover Washington’s huge annual operating deficit, every provocation possible
has been thrown at China.
The insults heaved at China go beyond hypocritical
human rights accusations or asylum for Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng. A
year ago Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that Washington has a
“national interest” in the South China Sea. This interest showed itself last
month in joint US-Philippines military exercises. China’s response
was a warning that the joint military exercises raise the risks of
armed confrontation over the disputed South China Sea. The Liberation Army
Daily put the warning bluntly: “Anyone with clear eyes saw long ago that behind
these drills is reflected a mentality that will lead the South China Sea issue
down a fork in the road to military confrontation and resolution through armed
force.”
Despite such warnings, Washington continues to stick
its nose into China’s disputes with Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia,
revealing, in the words of the Liberation Army Daily “the United States’
intention of trying to draw more countries into stirring up the situation in
the South China Sea.”
To increase its military presence in the Asia-Pacific,
Washington intends to construct a naval base on South Korea’s Jeju Island.
Washington has sent US Marines to Australia and is reassigning US Marines from
Japan to other Asia-Pacific locations. Pentagon spokesman George Little said
the reassignment “signals our commitment to Asia Pacific and it is a reflection
of our emphasis on Asia Pacific.” A deal is being cut for the US Navy to
return to Subic Bay, and according to some reports Washington is working to get
the Philippine government’s agreement for Japanese Self-Defense Forces to be
stationed alongside US troops on Philippine bases.
Thus has Washington positioned itself on the side of
the Philippines in the dispute with China over the Spratly Islands and
Scarborough Shoal, and on the side of Japan in the dispute with China over the
Diaoyu Islands. Washington has intentionally militarized the area as its means
of instigating a profitable long-term cold war with China.
Unlike Cold War I when the US economy was growing and
the incomes of Americans were rising, today the US economy remains mired in
years of recession. Much of the US industrial and manufacturing base has been
lost. For a decade or longer the economy has been unable to create
high-productivity, high-wage jobs. Both citizens and government are
deeply in debt. The unemployment rate declines because discouraged Americans
unable to find jobs drop out of the work force and cease to be counted as
unemployed.
Washington might imagine that the Federal Reserve can
continue to finance $1 trillion annual military/security budgets by monetizing
the government’s debt. However, printing money with which to buy things
eventually means high inflation.
There are only two ways to finance Cold War II.
One is to continue to collect the payroll tax but cease to pay Social Security
and Medicare benefits. The other is to seize the remaining wealth in private
pensions and IRAs.
Cold War II is going to be a bad experience for
Americans.
The Chinese economy is dynamic and vibrant. It has
been growing at unprecedented rates for 30 years. China has trade surpluses,
large reserves of foreign exchange, and has raised 600 million people out of
poverty. The US is broke, and its citizens are sinking into poverty.
In other words, the US has lost Cold War II before it
begins.
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