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(Fifth
and Last Part)
The
articles introduced in yesterday’s reflection, on February
14th, were written in the last two or three days.
More
than two weeks ago, on January 27, 2008, the digital
publication Tom Dispatch reproduced an article
translated for Rebelión by Germán Leyens: Why The
Debt Crisis is Now the Greatest Threat to the American
Republic, by Chalmers Johnson. This American
author has not been awarded the Nobel Prize, as has
Joseph Stiglitz, the famous and well-known economist and
writer, or even Milton Friedman himself, who inspired
neoliberalism and led many countries down that disastrous
path, including the United States.
Friedman was the most intensive advocate of economic
liberalism opposed to any government regulations. His ideas
nurtured Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. An active
member of the Republican Party, he advised Richard Nixon,
Ronald Reagan and Augusto Pinochet, that man with a sinister
story. He died in November of 2006 at the age of 94. He
wrote numerous works, among them Capitalism and Liberty.
When I
refer to Chalmers Johnson’s article, I am strictly abiding
by the irrefutable arguments he used. I use the method of
selecting essential paragraphs textually.
“Going
into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous
position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living
standards or its wasteful, overly large military
establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to
reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing
armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars
have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer
space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush
administration puts off these costs for future generations
to pay –or repudiate.
“This
utter fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through
many manipulative financial schemes (such as causing poorer
countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the
time of reckoning is fast approaching.
“There
are three broad aspects to our debt crisis. First, in the
current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of
money on “defense” projects that bear no relationship to the
national security of the United States. Simultaneously, we
are keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segments
of the American population at strikingly low levels."
“Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for
the accelerating erosion of our manufacturing base and our
loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military
expenditures…”
“Third,
in our devotion to militarism, we are failing to invest in
our social infrastructure and other requirements for the
long-term health of our country..."
“Our
public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We
have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and
neglected our responsibilities as the world’s number one
polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness
as a manufacturer for civilian needs –an infinitely more
efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing…”
“It is
virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our
government spends on the military. The Department of
Defense’s planned expenditures for fiscal year 2008 are
larger than all other nation’s military budgets combined.
The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan is in itself larger than the combined
military budgets of Russia and China. Defense-related
spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the
first time in history. The United States has become the
largest single salesman of arms and munitions to other
nations on Earth…”
“The
numbers released by the Congressional Reference Service and
the Congressional Budget Office do not agree with each
other…”
“There
are many reasons for this budgetary
sleight-of-hand—including a desire for secrecy on the part
of the president, the secretary of defense, and the
military-industrial complex—but the chief one is that
members of Congress, who profit enormously from defense jobs
and pork-barrel projects in their districts, have a
political interest in supporting the Department of Defense…”
“For
example, $23.4 billion for the Department of Energy goes
toward developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and
$25.3 billion in the Department of State budget is spent on
foreign military assistance…”
“The
Department of Veterans Affairs currently gets at least $75.7
billion, 50% of which goes for the long-term care of the
grievously injured among the at least 28,870 soldiers so far
wounded in Iraq and another 1,708 in Afghanistan.
“Another $46.4 billion goes to the Department of Homeland
Security; $1.9 billion to the Department of Justice for the
paramilitary activities of the FBI; $38.5 billion to the
Department of the Treasury for the Military Retirement Fund;
$7.6 billion for the military-related activities of the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); and
well over $200 billion in interest for past debt-financed
defense outlays. This brings U.S. spending for its military
establishment during the current fiscal year (2008),
conservatively calculated, to at least $1.1 trillion.
“Such
expenditures are not only morally obscene, they are fiscally
unsustainable. Many neoconservatives and poorly informed
patriotic Americans believe that, even though our defense
budget is huge, we can afford it because we are the richest
country on Earth… That statement is no longer true. The
world’s richest political entity, according to the CIA’s
“World Fact book”, is the European Union. The EU’s 2006 GDP
was estimated to be slightly larger than that of the U.S.
However, China's 2006 GDP was only slightly smaller that
that of the U.S., and Japan was the world's fourth richest
nation.
“A
more telling comparison that reveals just how much worse
we're doing can be found among the "current accounts" of
various nations. The current account measures the net trade
surplus or deficit of a country plus cross-border payments
of interest, royalties, dividends, capital gains, foreign
aid, and other income. In order for Japan to manufacture
anything, it must import all required raw materials. Even
after this incredible expense is met, it still has an $88
billion per year trade surplus with the United States and
enjoys the world's second highest current account balance.
China is number one. The United States, by contrast, is
number 163 -- dead last on the list, worse than countries
like Australia and the United Kingdom that also have large
trade deficits. Its 2006 current account deficit was $811.5
billion; second worst was Spain at $106.4 billion. This is
what is unsustainable. .. "
“Our excessive military expenditures did not occur over
just a few short years. They have been going on for a very
long time in accordance with a superficially plausible
ideology and have now become entrenched. This ideology I
call "military Keynesianism" -- the determination to
maintain a permanent war economy and to treat military
output as an ordinary economic product, even though it makes
no contribution to either production or consumption...
“The Great Depression of the 1930s had been overcome only by
the war production boom of World War II…”
“With this understanding, American strategists began to
build up a massive munitions industry, both to counter the
military might of the Soviet Union (which they consistently
overstated) and also to maintain full employment as well as
ward off a possible return of the Depression. The result was
that, under Pentagon leadership, entire new industries were
created to manufacture large aircraft, nuclear-powered
submarines, nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic
missiles, and surveillance and communications satellites.
This led to what President Eisenhower warned against in his
farewell address of February 6, 1961: "The conjunction of an
immense military establishment and a large arms industry is
new in the American experience" -- that is, the
military-industrial complex.
“By 1990, the value of the weapons, equipment, and factories
devoted to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of
all plants and equipment in American manufacturing…”
“Even though the Soviet Union no longer exists, U.S.
reliance on military Keynesianism has, if anything,
ratcheted up…
“Devotion to military Keynesianism is, in fact, a form of
slow economic suicide…”
“The historian Thomas E. Woods, Jr., observes that, during
the 1950s and 1960s, between one-third and two-thirds of all
American research talent was siphoned off into the military
sector…”
“Between the 1940s and 1996, the United States spent at
least $5.8 trillion on the development, testing, and
construction of nuclear bombs. By 1967, the peak year of
its nuclear stockpile, the United States possessed some
32,500 deliverable atomic and hydrogen bombs…”
“Nuclear weapons were not just America's secret weapon, but
also its secret economic weapon. As of 2006, we still had
9,960 of them (of the most modern ones). There is today no
sane use for them, while the trillions spent on them could
have been used to solve the problems of social security and
health care, quality education and access to education for
all, not to speak of the retention of highly skilled jobs
within the American economy. ..”
“Our short tenure as the world’s “lone superpower” has come
to an end.
“Today we are no longer the world's leading lending country.
In fact we are now the world's biggest debtor country, and
we are continuing to wield influence on the basis of
military prowess alone."
“Some of the damage done can never be rectified.”
“There are some steps that this country urgently needs to
take. These include reversing Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts
for the wealthy, beginning to liquidate our global empire of
over 800 military bases, cutting from the defense budget all
projects that bear no relationship to the national security
of the United States, and ceasing to use the defense budget
as a Keynesian jobs program. If we do these things we have a
chance of squeaking by. If we don't, we face probable
national insolvency and a long depression. “
In an Internet conference about Johnson’s work, the answer
is already designed by him. What does he say? Something
which I shall explain in a very brief summary:
“Johnson is arguing that the United States is its own worst
enemy. ‘Sooner rather than later, he assures us, the
arrogance of the United States will result in its
downfall’. Johnson’s book is largely made up by independent
chapters on a number of vaguely related subjects.”
“’The time to avoid financial and moral bankruptcy is
short’. Later, he arrives at the following conclusion: ‘We
are on the edge of losing democracy in the name of holding
on to our empire’. Johnson’s work is described as
‘polemical’…While many of us have become insensitive to the
White House’s atrocities, Johnson’s indignation with the
Administration –its torture memoranda, its disdain for free
public information, its mockery of established treaties– is
vivid. This could be due to his conservative background:
Marine lieutenant in the 50’s, CIA adviser from 1967 to 1973
and a long-time advocate of the Vietnam War. Johnson became
horrified by militarism and American interventionism late in
the game. Now he is writing as if he would like to make up
for lost time. The most outstanding of Johnson’s
contributions to the debate about the American empire is his
documentation of the vast network of U.S. military bases
overseas…
“’Many years ago we were able to trace the expansion of
imperialism by tallying up the colonies', writes Chalmers
Johnson in Nemesis: The Last Days of the American
Republic. ‘The American version of the colony is the
military base…’”
“Nemesis is a book about hard power. By comparing
the far-flung U.S. bases with Roman garrisons, Johnson
hypothesizes that things haven’t changed much since the days
of Caesar and Octavius. But with nuclear weapons scattered
among the great and the lesser powers, military might can
only achieve mutual destruction…Our troops are besieged.”
“Each one of Johnson’s erudite chapters teaches as much as
it disturbs. But his underlying moaning about the death of
democracy lacks analytic strength. Johnson looks
incredulously at ‘those who believe that Washington’s
governmental structure today is in any way similar to that
which was sketched out by the Constitution of 1787'.”
“Such pessimism seems exaggerated. The Republic has
survived Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover, and democracy,
despite the blows it has received, will also survive Bush.”
The arguments for concretely answering the article signed by
Johnson on January 27th require more than a
declaration of faith in democracy and freedom. Johnson did
not invent the arithmetic that even a sixth grade student
knows; nor was it invented by the great Chilean poet Pablo
Neruda, also a Nobel Prize Laureate. He was very close to
not getting his university degree: his biographer tells us
that he was constantly asking how much 8 times 5 were; he
could never remember that it was 40.
Several months ago, while carefully analyzing more than 400
pages of the translation of the memoirs of Alan Greenspan
who for 16 years was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of
the United States, The Age of Turbulence –about which
I promised to write some reflections and it is already water
under the bridge– I learned about the secret of his enormous
worries: what is beginning to happen today. In essence, I
clearly understood the consequences, so terrible for the
system, of printing paper bills and spending with no limits.
I deliberately did not confront any of the candidates from
both parties on the very delicate subject of climate change
to avoid disturbing illusions and dreams. Publicity does
not affect the laws of physics and biology. These are less
understandable and more complicated.
I expressed a few months ago the certainty that the most
knowledgeable person on the subject of climate change and
the most popular would not be running for president. He had
already been a candidate and victory was snatched from him
as the result of a scandalous fraud. He understood the risks
of nature and politics. Obviously, I refer to Albert Gore.
He is a good barometer. We have to ask him every day how he
slept. His answers would doubtlessly be useful to the
desperate scientific community which desires the survival of
the species.
In my next reflection I will deal with a subject of interest
to many compatriots, but I won't give any hints.
I apologize to the readers for the time and the space that I
took for five days with The Republican Candidate.
Fidel Castro Ruz
February 15, 2008
8:26 p.m. |
