- The Bush regime currently has wars underway
in Afghanistan and in Iraq and can bring neither to a conclusion. Undeterred
by these failures, the Bush regime gives every indication that it intends
to start a war with Iran, a country that is capable of responding to US
aggression over a broader front than the Sunni resistance has mounted in
Iraq.
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- The US lacks sufficient conventional
capability to prevail in such widespread conflict. The US also lacks the
financial resources. Iraq alone has already cost several hundred billion
borrowed dollars, with experts' estimates putting the ultimate cost in
excess of one trillion dollars.
-
- Moreover, the Bush regime's belligerent
foreign policy extends to regions beyond the Middle East. The Bush regime
has recently declared election outcomes in former Soviet republics as "unacceptable."
-
- The Bush regime with the support of both
political parties preaches democracy to the world while ignoring it at
home. Polls show that Americans are opposed to open borders and amnesties
for illegals. But a government willing to dictate to the world is willing
to dictate to its own citizens.
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- The "unacceptable" outcomes
are those that do not empower parties aligned with the US and NATO. Russians
view the Bush regime's "democracy programs" for Ukraine, Georgia
and Belarus as an effort to push Russia northward and deprive it of warm
water ports.
-
- Russian leaders speak of the "messianism
of American foreign policy" leading to a new cold war.
-
- An article in the current issue of Foreign
Affairs, long regarded as a voice of the American foreign policy establishment,
concludes that the Bush regime "is openly seeking primacy in every
dimension of modern military technology, both in its conventional arsenal
and in its nuclear forces." The article suggests that the US has now
achieved nuclear superiority and could succeed with a preemptive nuclear
attack on both Russia and China. Considering the extreme delusions of the
neoconservative warmongers who control the Bush regime, the publication
of this article will encourage more aggressive assertions of American hegemony.
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- The article has "had an explosive
effect" in Russia, according to former prime minister Yegor Gaidar.
The fact that Russia's nuclear missiles are no longer seen to be sufficiently
robust to serve as deterrents could dangerously unleash restraints on the
neoconservatives' proclivity to impose their will on the world. The authors
of the Foreign Policy article write that America's nuclear primacy positions
the US "to check the ambitions of dangerous states such as China,
North Korea, and Iran." Neocons, of course, never see their own ambitions
as dangerous.
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- The Bush regime has succeeded in committing
America to a belligerent and messianic foreign policy that means years
of wars at a minimum and likely preemptive US nuclear attacks against other
countries.
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- How will Americans pay for the decades
of war that the neocons are fomenting? The Afghan and Iraqi wars are being
financed by the Chinese and Japanese whose loans cover the Bush regime's
budgetary red ink. Can US nuclear primacy succeed in forcing the indefinite
extension of this financing as a form of tribute? Can the neoconservatives
subdue the Islamic Middle East with nuclear weapons without endangering
the flow of oil?
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- The classic method of war finance is
inflation. The Romans destroyed the intrinsic value of their coinage with
lead. When the US can no longer sell its bonds, it can print money.
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- The US might have nuclear primacy, but
it no longer has economic primacy. The US economy has been living on debt.
In 2005 American consumers overspent their incomes for the first time since
the Great Depression. The rising trade deficit is cutting into economic
growth. Middle class jobs for Americans are being lost to offshore outsourcing
and to foreigners brought in on work visas. Salaries in the jobs that remain
are being forced down. Adjusted for inflation, starting salaries for university
graduates are declining. Business Week's Michael Mandel (September 15,
2005) compared starting salaries in 2005 with those in 2001.
- Adjusted for inflation, starting salaries
for university graduates are declining.
-
- He found a 12.7% decline in computer
science pay, a 12% decline in computer engineering pay, and a 10.2% decline
in electrical engineering pay. Psychology majors experienced a 9.3% fall
in starting salaries, marketing a 6.5% decline, business administration
a 5.7% fall, and accounting majors were offered 2.3% less.
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- Economist Alan Blinder, a former vice-chairman
of the Federal Reserve, estimates that 42-56 million American service sector
jobs are susceptible to offshore outsourcing. Whether or not all of these
jobs leave, US salaries will be forced down by the willingness of foreigners
to do the work for less.
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- By substituting cheaper foreign labor
for US labor, globalization boosts corporate profits and managerial bonuses
at the expense of workers pay. We are seeing the end of the broadly shared
prosperity of the post-WWII era. Education and re-training are no protection
against offshoring and foreign workers entering America on work visas.
-
- Americans at the lower end of the income
scale are being decimated by massive legal and illegal immigration that
has dramatically increased the labor supply in construction, cleaning services,
and slaughterhouses.
-
- With incomes flat or falling and prices
rising, increased taxation to finance the neoconservatives' wars of aggression
is not in the cards.
-
- The Bush regime with the support of
both political parties preaches democracy to the world while ignoring it
at home. Polls show that Americans are opposed to open borders and amnesties
for illegals. But a government willing to dictate to the world is willing
to dictate to its own citizens. We are witnessing the American citizen's
loss of his voice and the rise of concentrated power. The primacy that
the neocons are seeking over the world will prevail over the American people,
too.
-
-
 Paul
Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.
He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing
Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
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