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How is US becoming richer day by day at the expense of
the Third World counties? How the American Empire expanding its claw over
the poor under developed countries and plundering their wealth and
resources? US is imposing its interest on others ignoring their legitimate
rights in the name of globalization. It is destroying, in the name of free
trade, the economy of other nations and their potentials. The policy
planners in the White House and Pentagon see the interest of America as
the interest of the world. Today the world has become an extended American
village.
The current US aggression and occupation of Iraq for possessing weapons of
mass destruction has proved to be a deliberate lie. Toppling Saddam
Hussain also was not the real agenda. Ostensibly US intervenes in the
Third World countries in the name of defending democracy, human rights and
freedom, but beneath the apparent reason, the real intention always is
protecting markets and plunder wealth and resources of the country it is
invading. Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, in 2001 stated
that “oil is too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the
Arabs” (Feryal Ali Gauhar, US Expansionist Design in the Middle East. The
New Nation, 3 January 2004).The fear of the analysts has now proved true
that US in collusion with its allies invaded Iraq to steal Iraqi oil and
she is successfully doing this by giving contracts only to US
multinational corporations. Pentagon on 5 December 2003 barred French,
German, Russian and Canadian companies from $ 18.6 billion contracts for
the reconstruction of Iraq for not joining US war against Iraq which
recently UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has declared illegal (AFP,
Washington. 10 December 2003).
Counterpunch magazine, immediately after 9/11, published a report by
American peace activist Zoltan Grossman based on Congressional Records and
the Library of Congress Research Service. According to this report US
military made 134 interventions, small or big, global or domestic,
covering 111 years between 1890 and 2001 including intervention in
Afghanistan, that means on an average 1.15 interventions per year up to
the end of World War II; that increased to 1.29 during Cold War, and after
the fall of Berlin Wall increased further to 2.0 per year. No doubt the
hyper-imperialist US increased the number of interventions to protect its
interest in the expanding world the pattern of which changed drastically
since the end of Cold War. The first focus of US intervention was East
Asia- Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and Iran. This was extremely violent. The
second intervention was Eastern Europe but due to the presence of now
defunct USSR as counter balancing force the attacks were not that violent.
The third phase was Latin America starting from Cuba and spreading rest of
the countries of the region. The forth phase is focused on West Asia, the
Middle East- starting from Palestine, Iran, Libya, Lebanon-Syria and moved
on to Iraq during in 1990s and the beginning of 21st century to
Afghanistan. US interventions started, civilization wise, from
Confucian-Buddhist to Orthodox Christian, then to Catholic Christian, and
finally to Islamic civilization.
This US did with or without the help of UN. US behaves as if UN is her
sole property, former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali commented
in his book ‘Unvanquished: a US-UN Saga’. US through intimidation, threat
and use of veto manipulated the world body for the benefit of its own
interest (Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Unvanquished: a US-UN Saga, New York,
Random House, 1999). When it suits US, it uses UN to seek the legitimacy
for its actions, to build coalitions and impose sanction on what it calls
the rogue states as happened during 1990s. When the world opinion goes
against the US, it treats UN with utter contempt as during the current
Iraqi invasion and occupation. Prior to the current Iraqi invasion, US
forcibly took away the dossier Iraq submitted to UN denying that it posses
WMD without the knowledge and approval of the UN Secretary General or
Security Council or General Assembly. US always tries to use UN as its
rubber stamp. Throughout UN history US has consistently vetoed all UN
resolutions and declarations that did not reflect US priorities and
business interest. US despise for the world opinion is reflected when
Boutros Boutros-Ghali was elected to the top post of UN in 1992, US vetoed
an extension of his term to 2001 despite approval of many other member
states of the world organization.
US maintains total control over World Trade Organization. WTO is indeed a
major instrument for maintaining American neo-imperialism. WTO is not the
only instrument for maintaining US hyper-power and technological
hyper-imperialism but also include International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank. WTO, IMF and World Bank are the most ambiguous and
undemocratic global institutions. The secrecy surrounding their decision
making process makes them ideal bodies for keeping the rest of the world
firmly at their grasp. WTO and IMF have effective mechanism for
enforcement of obligation, particularly over the developing countries, WTO
through the threat of retaliation against export of goods, IMF through
loan conditions which are imposed mercilessly. US uses these mechanisms to
keep the developing countries in line, and ensure the progress of
multinational companies by removing the impediment. To strengthen its
grip, US manipulates to make sure that the top jobs of WTO, IMF and World
Bank are shared by the West, US and Europe.
The world economy largely functions for the benefit of US and US led G7,
now G8 countries that operate to keep the developing nations poor.
Developing countries are forced to import expensive and often outdated
technology from US and other industrialized countries. The Third World
countries seldom can maintain and manage expensive technology. Very often
such technology undercut local technical know-how and age-old
manufacturing potentials and end up marginalizing the poor even more. The
misfortunes of the poor are thus a direct by-product of the self interest
of the rich.
US accumulated the wealth of the world through various kinds of
manipulations. It finances domestic growth through savings of the rest of
the world. Being the currency leader, US benefits from free money, of
issuing dollars for the use as cash around the world.
US refuses the countries of the Third World control over their own
economics. Most of the countries have no role on matters decided at IMF
headquarters and no say in its policy issues and little power to bring
about affective change in WTO. The policies attached with IMF loans, which
behind the scene US manipulates and dictates, lead the way to foreign
ownership and domination of the economy of the loan receiving poor
underdeveloped Third World countries, especially of the manufacturing and
financial sectors. For example, after the South-East Asian economic
crisis, IMF, at the insistence of the US, imposed on Thailand and South
Korea the condition that they must allow higher foreign ownership of their
economics. As part of the deal with IMF, Thailand was asked to allow
foreign banks to own more equity in the local banking sector. Through such
loan conditions, US business and technology corporations ended up wholly
or partially owning banks, financial institutions and key technology
sectors in the developing world.
During the 1997 economic crisis, the value of the Malaysian Ringgit was
reduced by 40 per cent, the Thai Bath by 55 per cent and the Indonesian
Rupee by 80 per cent as a result of which the purchasing power of the
region decreased by 700-800 billion dollars. The per capita income reduced
to half in terms of dollar. The Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange, then the
biggest share market institution in East Asia, was worst affected. On 5
January 1997, the Price Index of the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange stood at
1,332.04, within one year, on 12 January 1998, it slide down and the Price
Index reduced to 419.60 as a result lost value by 63 per cent within only
one year. Because of the crisis and the negative role of IMF, East Asian
countries lost trillion dollars. But few could identify the real
manipulator behind the scene.
In fact the West, particularly US – the lone superpower of the world,
played pivotal role in the making of this economic crisis. The West became
worried at the growth rate of the Asian countries because they thought
that these countries appearing in the scene as major actor to control
global economy and considered it as a threat to the interest of the West
in the region. The policy planners of US thought that East Asia is not
only becoming the center of global economic power but also poses a threat
to US interest. This was rightly pointed out by the Chinese newspaper
Peoples Daily. In an editorial in 1998 Peoples Daily commented that IMF
used East Asian crisis to protect and advance its strategic interest, and
US and IMF interests are intertwined. The West destroyed the economy of
the emerging Asian countries by manipulating share market and IMF is the
chief instrument and weapon in its armory.
US is manipulating trade liberalization, the removal or reduction of
barriers to international trade in goods and services, for one way open
access of American goods and thereby secure the interest of the
multinationals. Under WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture, and World Bank–IMF
imposed Structural Adjustment Program, at the behest of US, developing
countries made significant changes in their food and agricultural policies
and opened their economies to low-priced food imports while withdrawing
and reducing subsidy to their farmers. Under this arrangement WTO members
had to reduce tariff on food imports, state-run enterprises were
privatized, eliminating subsidies and price controls and closure of state
run marketing institutions. In fact, the whole arrangement is tied up by
US and EU which enabled them to export their surplus goods economically to
the developing countries, dump their goods sold below the cost of
production, in which the farmers, unable to compete, closed production
because farmers are sometimes forced to pay heavily for inputs often even
for seeds. Thus local agriculture is destroyed, domestic food production
is shattered, and food security of the country is seriously compromised
and endangered.
The ‘economic freedom’, promoted by US, in reality destroys the economic
freedom of the poor. In the name of free market economy it has, on the one
hand, opened for US technology-driven business the opportunity to enter
freely and capture the markets of the Third World countries. It has, on
the other hand, hindered the efforts of the developing countries to boost
their own products and exports, and bars them for US markets. Thus the
so-called free trade promoted by WTO and IMF amounts to highway robbery,
benefiting only the rich at the expanse of the poor, while making the poor
more vulnerable to food insecurity. As a consequence of American policies,
in a single day under globalization, poor countries lose nearly $ 2
billion due to rigged international trade and $ 60 million drains from
poor to rich countries in debt.
US always undercut the efforts of the least developed countries to combat
poverty. It imposes huge tariff on primary agricultural produces such as
food stuff. These trade restrictions cost the poorer countries of the
world a staggering $ 2.5 billion a year in lost foreign exchange earnings
[according to the statistics of 2002]. The overall effects are disastrous.
The dumping of American products in such labor intensive and job-creating
areas as agriculture, often at price lower than cost of production, has
shattered the economy of the importing Third World countries and reduced
the vulnerable population of such countries to abject poverty.
US gains from contracts with poor under developed and developing counties
are real and tangible, whereas the benefits derived by the Third World
countries from such contracts are illusory. Unequal contracts are largely
responsible for the increase of abject poverty in Africa, Latin America
and Asian countries. For example, US offers duty and quota free access for
African textiles and clothing to the American market provided these
products only use US fabrics and yarns. US imposes severe restrictions on
textiles made of African materials. The requirement of US raw materials to
be used in African products not only undermines the African countries’ own
domestic raw materials industries, but makes African textile products
uncompetitive in US market because importing US raw materials for textile
production in Africa is expensive given the transportation and other costs
involved, on the one hand. US, on the other hand, demands elimination of
barriers to all US trade and investment in Africa and equal treatment of
US and African firms.
US always works to bring the commodity prices down in developing world.
This it does to derive benefits as the principal consumer. Because of
deflation, US citizens benefit from price stability and the shock of wave
is felt in producer countries. The major contributor to low inflation has
been the consistent decline in prices for commodities, exported by
indebted countries, encouraged to get into exports as the way out of debt
by WTO and IMF.
Besides US imposes economic sanction as and when required if these
manipulations are not sufficient. US sanction against Iraq for more than a
decade which has been withdrawn only recently after its occupation is
still vivid in the peoples’ memory. During the last 80 years, such
sanctions have been imposed on various countries on 120 occasions, 104 of
them since World War II. In 1998 alone, US imposed sanctions against 75
countries, amounting 52 percent of the world’s population. Beneficiaries
of all these manipulations and exploitations of the global economy are US
consumers.
US is not satisfied by overt and covert manipulation of the poor
underdeveloped and developing economy of the Third World counties. It
wants to make sure that its citizens in no way become victim anywhere
outside America because of wrong doing. We therefore see that WB, at the
behest of US, is putting pressure on Bangladesh to pass such legislation
in the parliament that will give immunity to World Bank officials so that
the officials of WB cannot be challenged in the Bangladesh court for their
wrong doing. This is because WB is mainly manned by nationals of US,
Europe and other Western countries. During the presidency of Bill Clinton
the name of the Thai national Supachai Panitchpakdi came up for the top
job of WTO, but President Clinton threatened a permanent stalemate at WTO
unless America’s chosen candidate is accepted. The other reason for which
WB wants immunity for its officials is that sometimes officials of the
international agencies such as WB work for CIA and other Western
intelligence agencies and use their official position as cover and they
want to make it sure that they cannot be touched even after such nefarious
activities. Bangladesh on 17 August 2003 signed an agreement with Unites
States under which no American soldiers and officers charged with criminal
offence can be tried in Bangladesh or sent to International Criminal Court
for prosecution. According to a UNB report Bangladesh Ambassador to
Washington Syed Hassan Ahmed and US Assistant Secretary of State Christian
Rocca initiated the agreement in US capital on behalf of the respective
governments (The New Nation. 5 September 2003). Earlier after 9/11 US
passed legislation to the effect that it troops cannot be tried for
genocide and crime against humanity and it rescinded the protocol of
International Criminal Court signed previously. Behind all US actions, the
principal objective is to secure the national interest of America even if
such interest goes against the interest of others. This is Pax America.
This is the New World Order, if we at all call it an order, for how can a
system based on injustice, self interest, devoid of ethics and morality be
described as an order. This is the vision of the American Empire of the
new conservatives- the new cons. |