The Algerian Warning

Ignored by the West at its peril, dismissed as a unique case of both Islamist and regime viciousness, Algeria can also be viewed as a warning to the comfortable West of things to come: Algeria the neo-liberal showcase.

Algeria and the U.S. are two sides of the neo-liberal coin: the rich exist on a foundation of exploitation. While perhaps true as far as it goes, that static perspective conceals a more threatening reality: Algeria is the end point of neo-liberalism, the U.S. in the 1970s the beginning. While certainly morally troubling, for Americans in the 1970s, that might have imparted a somewhat reassuring message, but after 2008, U.S. citizens find themselves in a rather less encouraging position, visibly further down the road in the direction of Algeria. With millions out of work and more millions out of their homes while financial criminals receive taxpayer bailouts and a “stay out of jail free” card, with a health care system designed for profit rather than public health, with wages declining even as job security and job benefits are evaporating, Americans are beginning to see in the distance the impoverishment of society for the enrichment of the rich that constitutes the only system any living Algerian has ever known.

Algeria neither produces nor invests, living off resource exports, Lyes Akram tells us, with the profits going everywhere except to the people, one might add. With neither rule of law nor political institutions that protect the people, “the situation could not be more dangerous.”

l’Algérie est probablement le seul pays au monde dont l’économie est compréhensible aux enfants de 5 ou 6  ans. Deux axes. On ne produit quasiment rien et on n’investit pas. On importe presque tout et on exporte nos ressources qui sont surtout épuisables. En outre, la rente n’offre pas une vie décente au Algériens, à cause des rapines effrénées et de la corruption débridée. Même si les Algériens voulaient, pour des raisons déraisonnables, oublier l’illégitimité du régime, lui pardonner ses crimes passés et présents, il n’est nullement dans leur droit de permettre des crimes à l’encontre des générations futures. Puisque à l’évidence, la politique économique du régime, c’est l’assassinat de l’économie et la dilapidation irréversibles des ressources.Défaillance totale, ruine de l’économie, destruction du système éducatif, décomposition de la société, mais aussi, rappelle Hocine Aït-Ahmed, « Cinquante ans après la proclamation de l’indépendance nationale, nous voici face aux mêmes absences : Absence d’un Etat de droit, absence de vie politique, absence de constitution digne de ce nom, absence d’institutions légitimes capables de protéger le peuple autant que le pays des abus et d’assurer son droit à vivre dans la liberté et la dignité ». La situation du pays est on ne peut plus dangereuse.

While the Algerian author does not appear to have been thinking about Americans, for us to dismiss the plight of Algerians as irrelevant to the future of U.S. society would be a dangerous delusion. Algeria and America are inexorably bound by our thirst for their oil and the ease with which the Algerian military/intelligence dictatorship (that is the polite description; some Algerians would choose the word “voyoucratie” [thugocracy]) sell the line that only they stand between us and the barbaric hordes of fundamentalist Islam/middle class democracy. (What difference, after all, is there between revolutionary violence and true democracy from the perspective of a repressive and kleptocratic elite? Either way, if you are Pinochet or Somoza, you lose your privileges.)

With the social contract defined by the New Deal now being shredded--e.g., by the breaking of public worker contracts (in Wisconsin) and retirement contracts (throughout the U.S.), the conspiracy theory that the elite might intentionally impoverish the U.S. population—defining it as “superfluous”—just as the population of Algeria has, since 1992, been defined as superfluous, is beginning to appear a bit less crazy. Perhaps it is time we reevaluated the post-colonial experience of Algerians.

READINGS:

Justice Commission for Algeria

The Ugly Truth about Algeria

Venezuela: Victim or Target?

Washington, Bogota, and Caracas agree that the cocaine that used to be exported from Colombia to the U.S. is now being exported from Venezuela to the U.S. A decade of U.S. arms and money has apparently just moved the drug gangs’ headquarters to a neighboring piece of jungle. MSM rhetoric has a profound anti-Venezuelan bias. As Washington appears to be shifting its focus from the Mideast to Latin America, will Venezuela be treated as victim or target?

Globalizing Paraguay

After decades of oppression, a reformist president was finally elected in Paraguay, only to be suddenly impeached last month. In the ensuing five weeks, Paraguay has rushed to open the country to the U.S. military and controversial U.S. corporations.

Surrender

The famous letter sent by Cheney and others to the White House late in Clinton’s presidency advocating a global “take charge” foreign policy made quite clear the kind of America the neo-cons wanted and for a decade they got it: violence amazingly profitable for a handful of CEOs, vast losses of U.S. blood and treasure, and a string of Muslim societies trashed and radicalized. What kind of America equivocating Obama wants still remains a mystery, and his Iran policy does little to solve that mystery.

Surrender

Washington has deployed even more military forces against Iran and intensified its economic war against Iran, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard generals have launched a rhetorical broadside against Washington, and Israel has again threatened to commit aggression against Iran.

Cyberwar Is not a Game; It's War

The evidently casual attitude of Washington decision-makers notwithstanding, drone attacks and cyberwar are not games, despite using joy sticks and software; they are war.

Do No Harm

Iraq is the same dictatorial disaster it was under Saddam...plus endless non-government terror. Palestinian repression is a deep stain on the integrity of America. Somalia and Afghanistan are, by comparison with their circumstances two generations ago, destroyed societies. Saudi Arabia is on a domestic knife-edge. Iran, victim of an undeclared war by the U.S., is being terrorized, marginalized, and radicalized. Ironically, Israel, "victim" of a flood of thoughtless U.S. military aid and blind support for whatever ambitious politician happens to get elected, is also being terrorized, marginalized, and radicalized. The record of U.S. intervention in the Muslim world is one of incomprehension, immorality, arrogance, and self-defeating short-sightedness. But despair not! We have new opportunities in Yemen and Syria.

As for that new opportunity, Syria, it is surely clear that there are bad guys in Syria and it is obvious that those bad guys are backed by powerful organizations. It is only logical to assume that there are also many decent people being mistreated. Obama's pathetic philosophy notwithstanding, a Muslim does not deserve to be killed just because that Muslim happens to be an adult male. What is not clear is whether or not any "good" organizations exist and merit support.

Given the record of U.S. influence over Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, etc., it is also clear that the likelihood of Washington decision-makers correctly identifying an organization in Syria that might merit diplomatic, economic, or military support is very small.

It is no doubt useful to point out the evil being done by various Syrian politicians, though one must be careful to point out such evil regardless of which side is doing it (and few reports have such balance). But at this point, would it not be more valuable to lay out any argument that may exist to justify making a commitment to support those we think might possibly deserve our help? And if no such candidate can be identified, then the proper course of action lies elsewhere.

"Do no harm" should be the default course of action, especially for elephants. The burden of proof lies on those Westerners who presume to have the wisdom to interfere in Muslim societies and make things better.

Twenty-First Century Class War

The economic ship of the West is dead in the water because the wind of social egalitarianism that has blown strong since the New Deal and victory over fascism has been replaced by a new class war by the uber-rich.

The uber-rich of the extreme right has decided to abandon the New Deal compromise and launch a class war against the 99%. This is not ideological hot air. Protection of rich financial criminals, bailouts of fraudulent corporations, planetary environmental poisoning, the intentional promotion of bubbles, the exploitation of natural and political disasters to further enrich the rich, and direct attacks against democracy to suppress public criticism that might "embarrass" the rich constitute the 21st century weapons of choice for class warfare. Wealth should be built on a rich society, not the zero-sum game of the rich stealing from the poor. This paragraph is a huge accusation of unpatriotic behavior and deserves extremely careful analysis, which is indeed being done by numerous specialists and protest groups, but perhaps a few points are worth spelling out here:

Oil-Poisoned Turtle, Courtesy of BP, an "Innocent Corporate Person"

• when an oil corporation is allowed to walk away free after poisoning a significant portion of the world's best fishing territory, endangering the livelihood of thousands of fishermen and wrecking the very genetic foundation of life itself, the economy has been undermined in a way that, for those of us alive today, effectively amounts to permanent damage: we can never be that rich again;
• when gambling with other people's money and doing so under false pretenses becomes not just a fraudulent fad but the primary path to self-enrichment, society is little more than a junkie seeking his next high;

Torturing the Unindicted, Courtesy of the Neo-Cons

• when an imperial project to shore up superpower control over other societies that aspire to independence, not to mention grabbing their resources, goes to the extreme of destroying their whole society, the whole world has been impoverished;

• when a country behaves with such viciousness, it harms itself, a conclusion all the more true when that country is a democracy that aspires to lead the world by example;
• when government oppresses free speech to protect fraudulent corporations from being publicly criticized.

Such is class war in the 21st century.


If you still think that "fraud," i.e., criminal behavior, is too strong a term for the broad behavior over the last decade of the financial elite of the U.S. on Wall St. and in the home mortgage industry or if you do not think Washington is complicit in this fraud, consider this:

Fraud does not even make Geithner’s list of contributing factors to financial crises.  The U.S. has experienced three recent financial crises – the S&L debacle (which is the subject of this first installment), the Enron era frauds, and the ongoing crisis.  Accounting control fraud is the leading cause of each of the crises.  “Control fraud” is the term white-collar criminologists use to refer to frauds in which the person controlling a seemingly legitimate entity uses it as a “weapon” to defraud.  Accounting is the “weapon of choice” for elite financial frauds.  Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime – combined. [William Black on New Economic Perspectives.]

The latest case in point is the effort by Bank of America to resist stockholder demands that it review its own foreclosure practices! 

The New York City pension funds and 9 other institutional investors are urging Bank of America to conduct a thorough review of its foreclosure practices and report the results to shareholders. BofA has been plagued by widespread allegations of fraud in the foreclosure process, with a report from the Inspector General at the Department of Housing and Urban Development finding that the bank's management was involved in the improper foreclosure practices. BofA management opposes the shareholder resolution that would require a review of foreclosure practices. [Huffington Post 5/9/12.]

Demanding that BOA officials be jailed might, indeed, meet with resistance on the part of those officials, but why would they resist calls for them to conduct their own internal reviews...unless they were already well aware they had plenty to hide? 


The key to solving the problem is for Americans to realize that war abroad and theft at home are two sides of the same class war coin. Socially conscious domestic policy  (policy designed to care for the 99%) does not fit well with a foreign policy based on force. Such a combination would constitute a self-contradictory combination. To put it simply, leaders of imperialist campaigns see citizens as cannon fodder, not those they serve. Moreover, force (more specifically, the American way of high-tech war) is expensive.


Were the uber-rich (e.g., Romney, the Koch brothers, Mozillo, the CEO's of the horde of war profiteer corporations like Halliburton, and the officials of Big Oil) to pay their fair share for their privileges, enormous strides toward bringing America back could be made. There is much to be done - creating a world-class solar industry, cleaning up New Orleans...


Unfortunately, the Obama Administration remains stuck in essentially a neo-con foreign policy of playing a zero-sum game of U.S. supremacy at the expense of justice for Muslim societies and a "neo-liberal" (i.e., very conservative, exploitative) domestic policy of protecting billionaires at the expense of society.

Algeria As Prologue

In the book of America's conflict with politically active Islam, Algeria is the prologue.

Connecting the Dots: War Profiteers Target Iran

The pro-war political propaganda of a defense industry booster firm reveals one way that war-profiteering corporations promote international tension and war for private gain.

The formula is pretty simple: 

Arms Factory + War-Mongering 'Independent' Propaganda = $$$.

Once you have a factory that makes weapons, buy yourself an “institute” that churns out “academic” analyses of world affairs designed to wave the bloody shirt. Either you win by selling Washington arms that will sit and rust somewhere or Washington will actually use those weapons, in which case you win again by expanding your market and also by opening a sub-division to rebuild the country you just helped destroy.

Forbes has described the now scandalous process by which think tanks are degenerating into glitzy propaganda arms of the military-industrial complex: 

in Washington, think tanks are becoming so political that they are more like lobbyists than academic institutions…. 

the pressure on researchers to conform to partisan political objectives is going to become even more intense, and if they are going to be expected to function as de facto lobbyists they are going to expect to be paid like lobbyists, which will ratchet up pressure to raise money from those with a purely bottom-line perspective. I fear that honesty and truth will get more and more lost in the process.

A simple example of how this is currently pressuring the U.S. into war against Iran follows.

In a highly biased piece of war-mongering propaganda, the Lexington Institute, which was described by Harper’s as “the defense industry's pay-to-play ad agency,” is beating the drums for a war on Iran. The Institute dismisses claims that Iran is several years away from a bomb as an “Obama Administration” claim that “may be irrelevant,” (which of course also means it may “be” relevant), carefully avoiding the fact that it is not only the Administration but numerous military/intelligence officials in both the U.S. and Israel who consider Iran years from the bomb, not to mention considering the idea of attacking Iran bad for U.S. and Israeli national security.

The Institute then tosses in the standard scare tactic that “Once Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is rendered bomb proof then the world’s only recourse will be sanctions." God forbid that the world turned to the recourse of persuading Israel to relinquish its demands for military dominance over the Mideast (that truly irritates Iran) and the colonization of Palestine (that opens the door for Iran to interfere in Levantine affairs) or that the world turn to the recourse of actually negotiating a positive-sum solution to the broader U.S.-Iranian strategic argument. Oh, no, threats and some sort of war--be it intel, military, terrorist, or economic—will be the only solution.

After admitting that an Israeli attack would not destroy the Iranian nuclear infrastructure and would provoke terrorism, the Institute nevertheless argues that Israeli aggression would have its benefits. An Israeli non-nuclear attack, the Institute broadly implies, would warn Iran that Israel might consider a nuclear attack! Now there’s some good news for all us war profiteers! And even if Israel doesn’t attack at the moment, that’s OK too – just gives the U.S. more time to arm Israel with the long-range Arrow 3 interceptor “specifically designed to go after Iranian ballistic missiles.” The bottom line is clear: for the offense industry, the threat of war against Iran is good news however you look at it.
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READINGS:


Must-Read War Profiteers website.


See this report for the latest on corruption of Halliburton/KBR.


For the other side of the coin, Iran's military-industrial complex, see here. The money quote:

the IRGC is not only an army, but a monster conglomerate with myriad military-industrial, economic and financial interests. Top managers - and the array of enterprises they control - are bound to the ethos of antagonising the West, the same West from whose sanctions they handsomely profit. So, for them, the status quo is nice and dandy - even with the everyday possibility of a miscalculation, or a false-flag operation, leading to war.

2010 Congressional Report on Contracting Fraud in Afghanistan and How It Endangers U.S. Forces

City on the Hill?

With the U.S. running the world, unfortunately, everyone else behaves just like us.

Will Netanyahu's Provocations Backfire?

Netanyahu’s combined efforts to push the U.S. into a war on Iran as a smokescreen for his plan to absorb the West Bank and to manipulate the U.S. presidential election may open the door to an alliance of U.S. and Israeli national security officials who believe in security through peace and justice.

U.S. Policy on Iran Is Designed to Fail

Intentionally or not, Washington's policy toward Tehran is flawed politically, historically, and psychologically. It is a policy designed to fail.

Never, ever say “please” if you can get away with spitting in someone’s face. That, in this highly civilized new century, has become the essence of American policy toward Iran. Many in Washington will surely defend this approach as “the only language they understand.” Maybe so. One thing is for sure: it is the only language in which they have heard us speak.

In defense of Washington policy makers, they of course do not know how Tehran might respond to a sincere and consistent policy of inviting Tehran policy makers to sit down and reason together. And they can be excused for seeing little likelihood of being able to convince Tehran of sudden American sincerity between now and the Presidential election.

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A Policy Designed to Succeed

A policy designed to persuade Tehran to forgo militarization of nuclear technology would contain at least three shifts in U.S. policy toward Iran and one fundamental shift in the regional context. The policy shifts toward Iran are obvious: respect, inclusion, and security. The regional shift is sufficient movement toward justice for Palestinians to make radical Iranian involvement in the Levant irrelevant. Amazingly, all these U.S. moves, which Washington seems to find so distasteful, are fully consistent with U.S. national security.

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Nevertheless, it is worth considering how Americans would feel if China or Russia  invaded Mexico, set up a string of huge military bases there, and sailed an offensive Armada into the Gulf of Mexico, while loudly discussing the “option” of attacking the U.S. (of course, with “pinpoint accuracy” to avoid civilian casualties…except for scientists working at the Pentagon), and demanded that the U.S. relinquish not just its most powerful weapons but its right even to conduct research toward some future emergency development of such weapons. How many American politicians would bend their knee and disarm in return for nothing more than the “privilege” of being invited to negotiations? How many who did bow down would win reelection?

Even the most reasoned high-level U.S. pronouncements about Iran come out wrong. Consider Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recent statement that Iran is only laying the groundwork for a possible future bomb. That would seem to settle the issue in a rational world. Countries have the right to lay the groundwork for future defense. But no…he then continued to point out that even though he admits Iran is not building nuclear arms, “the responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting diplomatic and economic pressure on them to force them to do the right thing.” Leon, you really understand human nature. As long as you can spit in their face, don’t ever say please.

But the mistake is more serious than just egregious American bullying that accomplishes nothing more than to irritate Tehran and make a serious global issue dangerously emotional. Even in rational terms, Panetta is singing off-key. Perhaps in Washington, it seems rational for all countries, even those threatened with aggression, to trust Washington. Elsewhere, "rational" would not be the word for such a naive attitude. On the contrary, given Washington's aggression against Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq, its threats against Iran can only be interpreted as making only one policy "rational" for Iranians: maximizing self-defense capabilities. That is not the lesson Washington should be teaching.

In this context of endless bullying without any inducement to compromise, an incident that will inflame passions is almost inevitable.

Whatever you may think of U.S. or Iranian foreign policy, the fact is that every time Tehran underscores its independence and right to self-defense, Washington becomes more aggressive. If this is war, it is a one-sided war. Yes, Iran is insulting, warning, lecturing, posing, and desperately trying both to strengthen itself and to give the appearance of strength: only an unemployed Republican presidential candidate could define that as “aggressive.” Washington, in contrast, is intensifying a crippling campaign of economic warfare within a context of a simultaneously tightening military encirclement.

If Washington is bluffing, it is a convincing bluff, plenty convincing enough to make someone in Tehran’s highly factionalized regime panic. Let us assume, for the purposes of conversation, that Washington’s Masters of the Universe have everything perfectly calibrated to force Tehran to beg for mercy without any risk of a disaster. Let us assume that the disasters of the Iraq invasion, the on-going mess in Afghanistan, and the endless elite-created recession are lessons learned, mistakes never to be repeated. Wiser now, the Masters of the Universe really do know how to run the world, we shall assume.

Still, from Tehran’s perspective, things are starting to look a little scary. What if someone or some faction panics? What if a third party (say, an ambitious Israeli politician or an al Qua’ida type) sets a trap? What if Iranian decision-makers simply decide that Washington needs a slap on the face to wake it up?

What if Tehran calculates that things are getting out of control, that Washington leaders are not “Masters of the Universe” but just provincial politicians wrapped up in their election campaign? What might Tehran do? And how would American politicians, not exactly known for their ability to appreciate how the world looks to Muslims, be likely to react? In the current emotional situation, anything is possible, and almost every conceivable scenario will be bad news for Americans.

People do not respond very well to rude and highly public ultimatums, even when they are persuasive. Any Iranian politician who did so would almost certainly face discharge, arrest, and probably a firing squad for betraying his country. Moreover, how could an Iranian policy maker even defend a proposal to kowtow to the U.S. before his peers? The U.S. over the last decade has fought wars, either itself or via proxies, in Iraq, Somalia, Gaza, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. How many victories did it win?

Psychology suggests Tehran will not accept an ultimatum. History suggests the U.S. will only make matters worse if it starts another war. Both the U.S. secretary of defense and the recently retired Israeli head of Mossad see an attack on Iran’s nuclear establishment as at best a very short-term palliative. The U.S. campaign of economic warfare against Iran is empowering Iranian hardliners, putting the initiative in the hands of Moscow and Beijing, and alienating U.S. allies from Turkey to Japan (both of which are demanding the right to continue buying Iranian oil).

Washington’s policy toward Iran is a policy designed to fail. Why?

Jobs!

Stop whining. There are plenty of jobs.

All you 20 million unemployed Americans should just stop whining. There are plenty of jobs, with far more to come. Everyone who wants to work can get ten offers tomorrow morning. First, that imperial embassy in Baghdad is so big it will never have enough support personnel and security guards. Second, all those Pakistani truck drivers for U.S. forces in Afghanistan need to be replaced. Third, the construction of democracy, in fact the construction of roads, in Afghanistan is literally an endless task, since those who don’t like having Americans in charge of their country destroy everything as fast as it is built…so we need to build faster. And then there is Iran. Once we trash that country, American workers will have a real bonanza. Iran is not Iraq. Iran is big. For unemployed Americans who can’t drive or mix cement or man a security post, well, there’s always a job on the Afghan-Pak border persuading goatherds that cooperation with America is the best way for them to build their personal futures. So instead of sitting suicidal in your basements, start studying Farsi and Dari and Urdu. Your government will take care of you.

Challenge to the War Party

American media are being flooded with calls for aggression against Iran, all replete with glib assumptions and careful avoidance of any deep analysis of what might go wrong. Here is what I want:

an argument for launching a war against Iran that is intellectually honest and profoundly self-critical, an argument that enumerates assumptions and questions them, an argument that searches for what could go wrong and lays out a precise plan for avoiding pitfalls, an argument that shows how war will lead us to a world we can honestly expect to be better than it would have been without war.

I predict that no one can make such an argument. I challenge the smooth-talking, "they will welcome us with flowers" set--those of you who think wars can be managed and long-term dangers avoided--to prove me wrong.

Iraqi Lessons

The Washington elite decision to invade Iraq occurred for reasons that thinking Americans will bitterly debate for much of the rest of this century. Like it or not, the influence of that decision will be heavy on the shoulders of every person alive on earth for the rest of that person’s life. The question now centers on the lessons we all learn.

Lesson #1: War does not create democracy. If Washington invaded Iraq to defend freedom, the invasion was a disaster. The behavior of the U.S. toward occupied Iraq, the behavior of U.S.forces in Iraq, and the behavior of Iraqi politicians during the occupation have all tarnished the reputation of that ever out-of-reach ideal known as “democracy.”

Lessson #2: The American way of war destroys societies rather than saving them. If Washington invaded Iraq to save the Arab people, its destruction of the most advanced middle class society in the Arab world makes the failure of that goal crystal clear.

Lesson #3: A flashy war somewhere else will trick the American people every time. If Washington invaded Iraq to keep Bush-Cheney in office, the plan worked brilliantly, rescuing an apparently doomed administration. Perhaps the worst president in American history was able to preside over what was, in moral terms, perhaps the most immoral decade in American history, step nimbly over the thousands of dead civilians, ignore the tattered remnants of U.S. Constitutional guarantees of civil liberties, and announce with a grin that being president had been “fun.”

Lesson #4. Empires feast on war. If Washington invaded Iraq to build empire, the lesson to be derived from the perspective of the American people is quite different from the lesson that an empire-builder would derive. Despite being fought to a draw by “rag-tag extremists”—many of whom were in fact genuine nationalists and having its uniformed forces essentially kicked out, the empire-builders have much to savor: Iraq remains, sort of, in the U.S. orbit, with huge and dangerous U.S. mercenary forces evidently planning to remain. Then there’s that monster fortress embassy in the Green Zone. As for the ring of real fortresses, the U.S. military bases, just exactly what is happening to them? More significantly for empire-builders, the war facilitated the establishment of a larger ring of U.S. bases throughout the region, not just surrounding Iran but making clear that, for the moment, the U.S. is the winner of the Central Asian Great Game that Russia and Great Britain used to fight. Of course, the small matter of how to avoid a second embarrassing “victory”—in Afghanistan—remains to be worked out; some of our brilliant strategists are now suggesting the (to empire-builders) obvious solution: expand the failed Afghan adventure to Pakistan.

Lesson #5. Even winning a war can harm your security. OK, maybe the U.S. did not exactly “win” the Iraq war, but it certainly conquered the place and invented its current government. Yet who in the U.S. feels more secure? The war empowered bin Laden for years, multiplied anti-U.S. feeling worldwide, contributed greatly to a continuing U.S. economic mess, left the country profoundly divided, and left the U.S. embarrassingly irrelevant in the Arab world, as became obvious when the White House sat on the sidelines during the heady days of Tahrir Square. Meanwhile, Iran, which empire-builders and Likudniks so love to criticize, is manifestly more significant on the world stage than it was a decade ago. Much more seriously for real strategic thinkers, Russia and China are steadily moving forward with low-cost economic development projects to expand their global influence while being pushed more and more warmly into a strategic embrace by the squeeze the U.S. is putting on them.

Lesson #6. Aggression is complicated. If Washington invaded Iraq to get Iran, well, Washington transformed Iraq from Iran’s main enemy into, shall we say, a very friendly and submissive neighbor: dare we say “Iraq is Persian for Canada”? And now Washington is almost throwing Pakistan as well into Iran’s orbit. In the process, Washington also taught Iranians at least two lessons that will come back to haunt Americans. First, Iranian efforts to work with the Bush Administration were accepted briefly when desperately needed to construct a new Afghan regime, after which Bush immediately insulted Iran (remember “Axis of Evil”???). Second, tensions with Iran have greatly empowered Iran’s own militaristic, super-nationalistic “neo-cons.” Iranians have learned that hostility toward the U.S. pays a lot more than cooperation.

Lesson #7. War enriches the rich. This one is harder to contemplate; it's a real conspiracy theory and surely must impute more deviousness to certain factions than they deserve, but if some of those who supported the invasion of Iraq did so to blind the 99.9% to the accelerating shift of power and wealth into the hands of the 0.1%, they certainly achieved what they wanted. One one level, the shift of wealth to the uber-rich occurred directly through the enormous benefits handed to CEOs profitting from the war. On a second level, war tensions distracted Americans. Linking the levels together was an insidious dynamic of rising impoverishment of the 99%, facilitating the task of persuading some of them to sacrifice their lives on the battlefields of empire. That this in fact worked and did so on at least two crucial levels is pretty much beyond dispute; that it was planned from Day 1 is less clear. Nonetheless, now they own it all.

The American people (not the Occupiers; that courageous minority understands the need to defend democracy) are right: a self-satisfied if embarrassed grin followed by firm denial and a trip to the mall is the only way to deal with this mess. Face up to reality and we will all need psychiatrists.

Pakistani Academic Warns of U.S. Threat

Opinion and policy emerge not just from the politicians but also from informed society. If a recent Pakistani academic's assessment of the U.S. as a threat that Pakistan must counter by cooperation with Iran and Russia becomes representative of Pakistani public opinion, the U.S. is likely to face a significant diplomatic and strategic defeat.

Shooting Ourselves in the Foot

Human nature creates crises: the safer, smoother, more stable things are, the more risk people will take, sooner or later wrecking all that stability. Despite the outpouring of analyses of the 2008 Financial Crisis, it remains unlikely that society has internalized this lesson about the ever-present threat of human nature even as regards economic crises, however obvious the message may be. How much less likely is it that we are anywhere close to protecting ourselves from self-inflicted political crises?

We all are now aware that the shortsighted, selfish behavior of a few millionaires on Wall Street, a few politicians, some compliant regulators, and--truth be told--more than a few of the "other 99%" looking to cheat their neighbors for a quick buck can combine to generate a financial tsunami. It's not about foreigners. We are our own worst enemy. What most complacent and confused Americans fail to understand is the degree to which we make our own international political crises as well. From the American War in Vietnam to the Global War on Terror to the looming war against Iran (backed by Russia, China, and maybe Pakistan), the U.S. has the power to take the initiative and create these disasters but lacks the power to resolve them in a beneficial manner.

Note clearly that this discussion concerns “self-inflicted crises,” those resulting from the conscious choice to engage in unnecessarily greedy behavior. A crisis caused by an external force, human or natural, lies outside the discussion. Here the concern is on a class of crisis caused by perfectly avoidable human greed leading to obviously risky behavior (in effect, investing in a chain letter). To put it differently, the class of crises of interest here is a class for which one should expect the guilty to be named and punished (both by the judicial system for crime and by God for their sins).

Since everyone is now thinking about utterly unnecessary and egregiously man-made financial crises even as we are hit by repeated utterly unnecessary and egregiously man-made political crises, a question that seems timely and useful flows from the above paragraphs:

Can our recently learned lessons about financial crises help us to avoid political crises?

In The Black Swan, Taleb reports an alleged pattern of economic risk-taking:

The economist Hyman Minsky sees the cycles of risk taking in the economy as following a pattern: stability and absence of crises encourage risk taking, complacency, and lowered awareness of the possibility of problems. [78.]

Nouriel Roubini, the economics professor who predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis in brilliant detail, described the “vicious cycle” of economic crises as consisting of [once I delete the economic adjectives] the following steps [Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm, Crisis Economics 18.]:

1. Worries drop;
2. Costs fall;
3. The bubble drives growth;
4. Increasingly risky ventures are undertaken.

Applying this abstract vicious cycle (to which I would simple add the obvious final step—collapse, i.e., the point at which the cycle ends...with a bang) derived from economics to international relations is suggestive. Whether in economics or politics, the dynamics of the bubble of greed are frequently equivalent. In the aftermath of 2008, the point as regards economics must be obvious to all, whether they have read Marx, Keynes, Minsky, and Roubini or not. Every poor, naïve, uneducated (or just greedy) homeowner who took out a mortgage that he or she obviously could not afford and has now lost that home is today an expert in bubble economics and the danger to us all posed by unregulated capitalism.

But international politics is harder to see clearly through the fog of greedy politicians who classify information to prevent the voters from learning the truth and who wave the bloody shirt of foreign “menace” to promote their careers. Language too helps to obfuscate. We do not talk of “imperialist bubbles.” But if one abstracts to clear away the clutter of detail, the dynamics of greed, willful denial, moral hazard, and willingness to risk—even promote—“collateral damage” in so-called Global War on Terror looks like nothing so much as the 2008 Financial Crisis. Leaders became increasingly confident that they could not be stopped, with their appetites for new victories, new wealth, and new power rising apace. As the new policy—be it the issuance of new securities based on sub-prime mortgages or military adventures in yet another Muslim society—proceeded without major defeat, each new venture seemed less and less costly. Every small gain was used to justify a larger gain, every small risk to justify a larger risk. Even when the risks were seen, they were dismissed; after all, it was the poor who would suffer from unemployment and foreclosure…or death on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the case of the wars, most of those poor were foreigners. Moreover, like the Wall Street firms bailed out by politicians generous with taxpayer funds, the White House was “too big to fail.” Like Wall Street megabanks, the White House knew it and took advantage of it: moral hazard gone wild. Like big bank CEOs, presidents and vice presidents are almost never held criminally accountable in court for their sins. And then suddenly, the financial/imperial party was over, and the victims were left to clean up the mess.

In the abstract the pattern of failure is clear: failure of the people to carry out their democratic responsibility to monitor their leaders, arrogance, abuse of power, denial about the risks, corruption, lack of concern about collateral damage, and moral hazard.

As long as society trusts those in power, the powerful will abuse that trust for personal advantage, be it the selling of bad securities or the selling of bad wars. The more society is willing to countenance collateral damage to workers driven into unemployment and homeowners foreclosed, or Muslim wedding parties bombed and Muslim societies denied the right to civil liberties and national independence from the globalization avalanche, the more the rich and powerful will hold parties at the expense of everyone else. Bubbles are very good business for those who create them. “They” will never stop doing so until “we” put in place the moral strictures, legal regulations, and judicial holding to account necessary to stop them. But it is not that simple, for many of “us” were tempted to buy houses we judged we could flip into the hands of a more naïve neighbor to skim an unfair profit; many of “us” looked the other way while innocent Muslims across the globe were slaughtered in the name of global war to retain all the undeserved special privileges that make possible a rich life in a poor world. So in the end, the old saying is true: we get the government we deserve.

Obama Officially Endorses a Zero-Sum Mideast Policy

Obama rushes to maintain the Neo-Con attitude of in-your-face aggressiveness in the Mideast despite domestic unrest, withdrawal from Iraq, and a desperate search for an escape route from Afghanistan.

The Utility of Terror

Terror is a wonderful tool, opening wide the door of opportunity.