By Paul Craig Roberts
October 26, 2008
Undeterred by massive budget deficits from wars, a falling
economy, and financial bailouts, the US government has managed
to start a new cold war with Russia. Last Friday, the Russian
military announced that it was developing a new generation
of ballistic missiles in response to the US government’s
decision to deploy ballistic missile defenses in Poland and
the Czech Republic.
The “peace dividend” that the Reagan-Gorbachev
accord provided has been squandered by an arrogant American
government seeking world hegemony.
In 2002 the Bush regime unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty that the US government signed with the Soviet
Union in 1972. This treaty stabilized the “assured mutual
destruction” that prevented the two military superpowers
from initiating war, thus averting a nuclear holocaust for
30 years.
When the Soviet government released its Eastern European “captive
nations,” the US government promised not to recruit the
Baltic and Eastern European countries for NATO membership.
The US government pledged that NATO would not be brought to
Russia’s borders. There would be a neutral zone between
the Western military alliance and Russia. The American government
broke this promise as quickly as it could, bringing former
constituent parts of the Russian empire into the American empire.
Last October Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff, went to Lithuania to give a guarantee to the
Baltics of US military intervention in the event of a Russian
attack. Like the British guarantee that Chamberlain gave Poland
in 1939, a guarantee that precipitated World War II, Mullen’s
guarantee is worthless unless the US government initiates nuclear
war with Russia in defense of the tiny Baltic republics, which
would be wiped out by the radiation fallout.
The US has tried to incorporate the Ukraine and Georgia, constituent
parts of Russia for centuries, into NATO. To clear the way
for NATO membership, the Bush regime encouraged the American
puppet ruler of Georgia to cleanse provinces, attached to Georgia
by Stalin, of Russians in order to end secessionist movements.
When Russian troops drove the American and Israeli trained
and equipped Georgian army out of the Russian parts of Georgia,
the US government lied that Russia had invaded Georgia..
This malevolent lie was too much for the Russians and too
much of the rest of the world. It was plain to all that the
US, an aggressor state striving to encircle Russia with bases
even to the edge of central Asia, had initiated a war that
it then blamed on Russia. After Afghanistan, Iraq, Bush’s
defense of Israel’s 2006 war criminal attack on Lebanon,
and Bush’s false claims of an Iranian nuclear weapon,
few, if any, countries any longer believe pronouncements of
the US government. The US is regarded worldwide as an aggressor
state that lies through its teeth.
This means that unless China decides to play the US and Russia
off in order to emerge as the sole world power, there is no
one to finance America’s side of the new cold war that
the US government has created.
The only other way Washington can finance a new arms race
with Russia is to cancel Social Security and Medicare, and
to repudiate its massive foreign debts. If Washington does
this, the likely result would be revolution at home and isolation
internationally.
For decades Washington has prevailed because the US dollar
is the reserve currency. It is the world’s money. This
advantage allows Washington to purchase almost every other
government. There are governments all over the world, from
Europe to Egypt, from Ukraine to South Korea to Japan, that
are owned by Washington. When Washington speaks of spreading
freedom and democracy, Washington means it has purchased more
governments to do its will.
These purchased governments do not represent their people.
They represent American hegemony.
Now that the Great Hegemon is bankrupt and its economy is
collapsing, thanks to unbridled greed, American influence is
waning. The US dollar cannot survive the massive red ink that
the US generates.
When the dollar collapses, the image of a strutting Washington
as “the world’s only superpower” will evaporate.
The evil that is the American government will find itself at
war with its own people and those of the rest of the world.
-----
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.
Paul Craig Roberts can be emailed
here
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