A propósito de Siria

Más de una vez hemos señalado que la “guerra civil” siria es mucho más que un conflicto local, o incluso regional. Es el campo de batalla más visible donde se juegan, hoy, intereses y conflictos de alcance global. No es el único, pero si el de mayor envergadura; tampoco será el último. A propósito de Siria y “su” conflicto, nos gustó esta nota reciente de Thierry Meyssan para Red Voltaire:

Título: El ocaso de la guerra

Epígrafe: Si en vez de ver la guerra en Siria como un acontecimiento en sí mismo la consideramos el clímax de un conflicto mundial de más de un cuarto de siglo, tenemos que interrogarnos sobre las consecuencias del final, ya próximo, de las hostilidades. Su fin no marca la derrota de una ideología sino el fracaso de la globalización y del capitalismo financiero. Los pueblos que no han entendido eso, fundamentalmente en Europa occidental, se ponen al margen del resto del mundo.

Texto: Las guerras mundiales no terminan simplemente con un vencedor y un vencido. Su final traza los contornos de un nuevo mundo.

La Primera Guerra Mundial concluyó con las derrotas del imperio alemán, del imperio ruso, del imperio austrohúngaro y del imperio otomano. El fin de las hostilidades se vio marcado por la creación de una organización internacional, la Sociedad de las Naciones (SDN), encargada de abolir la diplomacia secreta y de resolver los conflictos entre los Estados-miembros a través de la negociación.

La Segunda Guerra Mundial concluyó con la victoria de la Unión Soviética sobre el Reich nazi y el imperio nipón del hakk? ichi’u [1], seguida de una carrera entre los Aliados por ocupar los despojos de la coalición derrotada. De ese conflicto nació una nueva estructura –la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU)– encargada de prevenir nuevas guerras mediante el establecimiento del Derecho Internacional alrededor de una doble legitimidad:

- la Asamblea General, donde cada Estado dispone de un voto, independientemente de su tamaño;

- y un directorio donde figuran los 5 principales vencedores del conflicto, o sea el Consejo de Seguridad.

La guerra fría no es la Tercera Guerra Mundial. Tampoco terminó con la derrota de la Unión Soviética sino con su derrumbe sobre sí misma. El fin de la guerra fría no dio paso a la creación de nuevas estructuras sino a la integración de los Estados ex soviéticos a organizaciones ya existentes.

La Tercera Guerra Mundial comenzó en Yugoslavia, continuó en Afganistán, Irak, Georgia, Libia y Yemen para terminar en Siria. Su campo de batalla se circunscribió a los Balcanes, el Cáucaso y lo que ahora se designa como el «Medio Oriente ampliado» o «Gran Medio Oriente». Sin desbordar demasiado hacia el mundo occidental, ha tenido sin embargo un gran costo en vidas para innumerables poblaciones musulmanas o cristianas ortodoxas. Y está concluyéndose desde que Putin y Trump realizaron su encuentro cumbre en Helsinki.

Las profundas transformaciones que han modificado el mundo durante los 26 últimos años han transferido parte del poder de los gobiernos a otras entidades, ya sea administrativas o privadas, así como a la inversa. Por ejemplo, hemos visto un ejército privado –el llamado Emirato Islámico (Daesh)– autoproclamarse Estado soberano. También hemos visto al general estadounidense David Petraeus organizar el mayor tráfico de armas de toda la Historia desde su cargo de director de la CIA y, luego de ser obligado a dimitir, lo hemos visto proseguir ese tráfico desde una firma privada, el fondo especulativo KKR [2].

La situación actual puede describirse como un enfrentamiento entre, de un lado, una clase dirigente transnacional y, por el otro lado, varios gobiernos responsables ante sus pueblos respectivos.

Las alegaciones de la propaganda atribuyen las causas de las guerras a circunstancias inmediatas pero esas causas se hallan, por el contrario, en rivalidades y ambiciones profundas y antiguas. Los países demoran años en levantarse unos contra otros. A menudo, sólo el tiempo nos permite comprender los conflictos que devoran nuestras vidas.

Por ejemplo, muy pocos lograron comprender lo que estaba sucediendo cuando los japoneses invadieron Manchuria –en 1938– y hubo que esperar a que Alemania invadiera Checoslovaquia –en 1938– para entender que las ideologías racistas estaban desatando la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Asimismo, también fueron pocos los que lograron entender, desde el momento de la guerra en Bosnia-Herzegovina –en 1992–, que la alianza entre la OTAN y el islam político abría el camino a la destrucción del mundo musulmán [3].

A pesar de los trabajos que han publicado periodistas e historiadores, son aún numerosos los que siguen sin ver la enorme manipulación de la que todos hemos sido víctimas. Quienes no ven eso se niegan a admitir que la OTAN coordinaba en aquella época todos los elementos sauditas e iraníes en Europa, a pesar de ser esto un hecho innegable [4].

También se niegan a reconocer que al-Qaeda, grupo terrorista al que Estados Unidos atribuye los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001, combatió en Libia y en Siria bajo las órdenes de la OTAN, lo cual es también innegable [5].

El plan inicial que preveía azuzar al mundo musulmán contra el mundo ortodoxo se transformó durante su aplicación. No hubo «guerra de civilizaciones». El Irán chiita se volvió en contra de la OTAN, bajo cuyas órdenes había luchado en Yugoslavia, y se alió con la Rusia ortodoxa para salvar la Siria multiconfesional.

Tenemos que abrir los ojos ante lo que la Historia nos enseña y prepararnos para el surgimiento de un nuevo sistema mundial, donde algunos de nuestros amigos de ayer se han convertido en enemigos y viceversa.

En Helsinki, no fue Estados Unidos quien concluyó un acuerdo con la Federación Rusa. Fue sólo la Casa Blanca porque el enemigo común es un grupo transnacional que goza de autoridad en Estados Unidos. Esa clase o grupo se considera el verdadero representante de Estados Unidos, aunque ese papel supuestamente pertenece al presidente, y no ha vacilado en acusar al presidente Trump de traición.

Ese grupo transnacional ha logrado hacernos creer que ya no hay ideologías y que estamos ante el fin de la Historia. Ha presentado la globalización –que en realidad es la dominación anglosajona mediante la imposición de la lengua y del modo de vida estadounidense– como una consecuencia del desarrollo de las técnicas del transporte y las comunicaciones. Nos ha asegurado que un sistema político único –la democracia, presentada como el «gobierno del Pueblo, por el Pueblo y para el Pueblo»– es lo ideal para todos los humanos y que es posible imponer ese sistema mediante el uso de la fuerza. Para terminar, ese grupo transnacional ha presentado la libre circulación de personas y capitales como la solución de todos los problemas de escasez de fuerza de trabajo y de inversiones.

Pero esas “verdades” que aceptamos en nuestra vida cotidiana no resisten al empuje de la reflexión.

Utilizando esas mentiras, ese grupo transnacional ha venido corroyendo sistemáticamente el poder de los Estados y acumulando enormes fortunas.

El bando que sale vencedor de esta larga guerra defiende, por el contrario, la idea de que para escoger su destino los hombres deben organizarse en Naciones definidas, ya sea a partir de un territorio, de una historia o de un proyecto común. Por consiguiente, ese bando apoya las economías nacionales contra la finanza internacional.

Acabamos de ver la Copa Mundial de Futbol. Si la ideología de la globalización hubiese triunfado, tendríamos que respaldar no sólo la selección de nuestro país sino también las de los demás países, en función de la pertenencia de esos países a estructuras supranacionales comunes. Por ejemplo, belgas y franceses deberían haberse apoyado mutuamente… agitando juntos banderas de la Unión Europea. Pero ningún aficionado se comportó así, lo cual nos permite comprobar el abismo que existe entre la propaganda que nos remachan constantemente –y que nosotros mismos repetimos– y nuestro comportamiento espontáneo. A pesar de las apariencias, la victoria superficial del globalismo no ha modificado lo que en realidad seguimos siendo.

Por supuesto, no es casualidad que sea Siria, la tierra donde nació y tomó forma la idea de lo que hoy llamamos “Estado”, el lugar donde ahora termina esta guerra. Porque tenían y tienen un Estado verdadero, que nunca dejó de funcionar, Siria, su pueblo, su ejército y su presidente lograron resistir el embate de la mayor coalición que se ha visto en la Historia, en la que se reunieron 114 países miembros de la ONU.

Notas:

[1] El hakk? ichi’u («los 8 extremos del mundo bajo un solo techo») es la ideología del Imperio japonés. Plantea la superioridad de la raza nipona y su derecho a dominar Asia.

[2] «Armamento por miles de millones de dólares utilizado contra Siria», por Thierry Meyssan, Red Voltaire, 18 de julio de 2017.

[3] Les Dollars de la terreur: Les États-Unis et les islamistes, Richard Labévière, Grasset, 1999.

[4] Wie der Dschihad nach Europa kam. Gotteskrieger und Geheimdienste auf dem Balkan, Jürgen Elsässer, Kai Homilius Verlag, 2006. Existe una edición en francés titulada Comment le Djihad est arrivé en Europe [en español, “Cómo llegó a Europa la yihad”], Xenia, 2006.

[5] Sous nos yeux. Du 11-septembre à Donald Trump, Thierry Meyssan, Demi-Lune 2017.

Noticias desde Afghanistán

Los EEUU han retomado las negociaciones con la guerrilla talibana. Algunos sugieren que se estaría conversando sobre un eventual retiro de las tropas estadounidenses de Afghanistán. De ser cierto, esto marcaría un punto de inflexión en el conflicto. La nota que sigue es del sitio web Moon of Alabama:


Título: U.S. Negotiates Retreat From Afghanistan

Texto: The United States seems ready to give up on Afghanistan.

After the World Trade Center came down the U.S. accused al-Qaeda, parts of which were hosted in Afghanistan. The Taliban government offered the U.S. to extradite al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden to an Islamic country to be judged under Islamic law. The U.S. rejected that and decided instead to destroy the Afghan government.

Taliban units, supported by Pakistani officers, were at that time still fighting against the Northern Alliance which held onto a few areas in the north of the country. Under threats from the U.S. Pakistan, which sees Afghanistan as its natural depth hinterland, was pressed into service. In exchange for its cooperation with the U.S. operation it was allowed to extradite its forces and main figures of the Taliban.

U.S. special forces were dropped into north Afghanistan. They came with huge amounts of cash and the ability to call in B-52 bombers. Together with the Northern Alliance they move towards Kabul bombing any place where some feeble resistance came from. The Taliban forces dissolved. Many resettled in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda also vanished.

A conference with Afghan notables was held in Germany's once capital Bonn. The Afghans wanted to reestablish the former Kingdom but were pressed into accepting a western style democracy. Fed with large amounts of western money the norther warlords, all well known mass-murderers, and various greedy exiles were appointed as a government. To them it was all about money. There was little capability and interest to govern.

All these U.S. mistakes made in the early days are still haunting the country.

For a few years the Taliban went quiet. But continued U.S. operations, which included random bombing of weddings, torture and abduction of assumed al-Qaeda followers, alienated the people. Pakistan feared that it would be suffocated between a permanently U.S. occupied Afghanistan and a hostile India. Four years after being ousted the Taliban were reactivated and found regrown local support.

Busy with fighting an insurgency in Iraq the U.S. reacted slowly. It then surged troops into Afghanistan, pulled back, surged again and is now again pulling back. The U.S. military aptly demonstrated its excellent logistic capabilities and its amazing cultural incompetence. The longer it fought the more Afghan people stood up against it. The immense amount of money spent to 'rebuild' Afghanistan went to U.S. contractors and Afghan warlords but had little effect on the ground. Now half the country is back under Taliban control while the other half is more or less contested.

Before his election campaign Donald Trump spoke out against the war on Afghanistan. During his campaign he was more cautious pointing to the danger of a nuclear Pakistan as a reason for staying in Afghanistan. But Pakistan is where the U.S. supply line is coming through and there are no reasonable alternatives. Staying in Afghanistan to confront Pakistan while depending on Pakistan for logistics does not make sense.

Early this year the U.S. stopped all aid to Pakistan. Even the old Pakistani government was already talking about blocking the logistic line. The incoming prime minister Imran Khan has campaigned for years against the U.S. war on Afghanistan. He very much prefers an alliance with China over any U.S. rapprochement. The U.S. hope is that Pakistan will have to ask the IMF for another bailout and thus come back under Washington's control. But it is more likely that Imran Khan will ask China for financial help.

Under pressure from the military Trump had agreed to raise the force in Afghanistan to some 15,000 troops. But these were way to few to hold more than some urban areas. Eighty percent of the Afghan people live in the countryside. Afghan troops and police forces are incapable or unwilling to fight their Taliban brethren. It was obvious that this mini-surge would fail:

By most objective measures, President Donald Trump’s year-old strategy for ending the war in Afghanistan has produced few positive results.

Afghanistan’s beleaguered soldiers have failed to recapture significant new ground from the Taliban. Civilian deaths have hit historic highs. The Afghan military is struggling to build a reliable air force and expand the number of elite fighters. Efforts to cripple lucrative insurgent drug smuggling operations have fallen short of expectations. And U.S. intelligence officials say the president’s strategy has halted Taliban gains but not reversed their momentum, according to people familiar with the latest assessments.

To blame Pakistan for its support for some Taliban is convenient, but makes little sense. In a recent talk John Sopko, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), made a crucial point:

“We keep referring to Pakistan as being the key problem. But the problem also was that the Afghan government at times was viewed very negatively by their local people and what you really need is to insert a government that the people support, a government that is not predatory, a government that is not a bunch of lawless warlords,” observed Sopko.

He went on to say that the U.S. policy of pouring in billions of dollars in these unstable environments contributed to the problem of creating more warlords and powerful people who took the law into their own hands.

“In essence, the government we introduced, particularly some of the Afghan local police forces, which were nothing other than warlord militias with some uniforms on, were just as bad as the terrorists before them,” said Sopko ...


This was the problem from the very beginning. The U.S. bribed itself into Afghanistan. It spent tons of money but did not gain real support. It bombed and shot aimlessly at 'Taliban' that were more often than not just the local population. It incompetently fought 17 one-year-long wars instead of a consistently planned and sustained political, economic and military campaign.

After a year of another useless surge the Trump administration decided to pull back from most active operations and to bet on negotiations with the Taliban:

The shift to prioritize initial American talks with the Taliban over what has proved a futile “Afghan-led, Afghan-owned” process stems from a realization by both Afghan and American officials that President Trump’s new Afghanistan strategy is not making a fundamental difference in rolling back Taliban gains.

While no date for any talks has been set, and the effort could still be derailed, the willingness of the United States to pursue direct talks is an indication of the sense of urgency in the administration to break the stalemate in Afghanistan.

...

Afghan officials and political leaders said direct American talks with the Taliban would probably then grow into negotiations that would include the Taliban, the Afghan government, the United States and Pakistan.

In February the Taliban declared their position in a public Letter of the Islamic Emirate to the American people (pdf). The five pages letter offered talks but only towards one aim:

Afghans have continued to burn for the last four decades in the fire of imposed wars. They are longing for peace and a just system but they will never tire from their just cause of defending their creed, country and nation against the invading forces of your war­mongering government because they have rendered all the previous and present historic sacrifices to safeguard their religious values and national sovereignty. If they make a deal on their sovereignty now, it would be unforgettable infidelity with their proud history and ancestors.

Last weeks talks between the Taliban and U.S. diplomats took place in Doha, Qatar. Remarkably the Afghan government was excluded. Despite the rousing tone of the Reuters report below the positions that were exchanged do not point to a successful conclusion:

According to one Taliban official, who said he was part of a four-member delegation, there were “very positive signals” from the meeting, which he said was conducted in a “friendly atmosphere” in a Doha hotel.

“You can’t call it peace talks,” he said. “These are a series of meetings for initiating formal and purposeful talks. We agreed to meet again soon and resolve the Afghan conflict through dialogue.”
...
The two sides had discussed proposals to allow the Taliban free movement in two provinces where they would not be attacked, an idea that President Ashraf Ghani has already rejected. They also discussed Taliban participation in the Afghan government.

“The only demand they made was to allow their military bases in Afghanistan,” said the Taliban official. 
...

“We have held three meetings with the U.S. and we reached a conclusion to continue talks for meaningful negotiations,” said a second Taliban official.
...

“However, our delegation made it clear to them that peace can only be restored to Afghanistan when all foreign forces are withdrawn,” he said.


This does not sound promising:

- In a first step the Taliban want to officially rule parts of the country and use it as a safe haven. The Afghan government naturally rejects that.

- Participation of the Taliban in the Afghan government is an idea of the Afghan president Ghani. It is doubtful that this could be successfully arranged. Norther Alliance elements in the Afghan government, like the 'chief executive' Abdullah Abdullah, are unlikely to ever agree to it. The Taliban also have no interest to be 'part of the government' and to then get blamed for its failures. Their February letter makes clear that they want to be the government.

- The U.S. wants bases in Afghanistan. The Taliban, and Pakistan behind them, reject that and will continue to do so.


It is difficult to see how especially the last mutually exclusive positions can ever be reconciled.

The Taliban are ready to accept a peaceful retreat of the U.S. forces. That is their only offer. They may agree to keep foreign Islamist fighters out of their country. The U.S. has no choice but to accept. It is currently retreating to the cities and large bases. The outlying areas will fall to the Taliban. Sooner or later the U.S. supply lines will be cut. Its bases will come under fire.

There is no staying in Afghanistan. A retreat is the only issue the U.S. can negotiate about. It is not a question of "if" but of "when".

The Soviet war in Afghanistan took nine years. The time was used to build up a halfway competent government and army that managed to hold off the insurgents for three more years after the Soviet withdrawal. The government only fell when the Soviets cut the money line. The seventeen year long U.S. occupation did not even succeed in that. The Afghan army is corrupt and its leaders are incompetent. The U.S. supplied it with expensive and complicate equipment that does not fit Afghan needs. As soon as the U.S. withdraws the whole south, the east and Kabul will immediately fall back into Taliban hands. Only the north may take a bit longer. They will probably ask China to help them in developing their country.

The erratic empire failed in another of its crazy endeavors. That will not hinder it to look for a new ones. The immense increase of the U.S. military budget, which includes 15,000 more troops, points to a new large war. Which country will be its next target?

Nada que no sepamos

No es nada que no sepamos ya, pero es bueno leer los argumentos todos juntos. Se trata de esa manía de la prensa corporativa de Occidente de tachar de "populista", "irresponsable" o "autoritario" a cualquier líder del mundo que no esté convencido de las bondades del modelo financiero contemporáneo. Modelo que se derrumba, claro está. La nota que sigue es de Finian Cunningham via el sitio web The Strategic Culture Foundation:



Título: Western Collapse... Scapegoating Trump & Putin

Texto: Former US President Barack Obama was in South Africa last week for the centennial anniversary marking the birth of the late Nelson Mandela. Obama delivered a speech warning about encroaching authoritarianism among nations and the “rise of strongman politics”.

Coming on the heels of the summit in Helsinki between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, media reports assumed that Obama was taking a swipe at these two leaders for supposed growing authoritarianism.

Obama’s casting of the “strongman” as a foreboding enemy to democracy is a variant of the supposed threat of “populism” that Western political establishments also seem concerned about.

Trump, Putin, Turkey’s Erdogan, Italy’s Salvini, Victor Orban in Hungary and Sebastian Kurz in Austria, among many others, are all lumped together as “strongman politics”, “populists” or “authoritarians”.

Here we are not trying to defend the above-mentioned political leaders or to make out that they are all virtuous democrats.

The point rather is to debunk the false narrative that there is some kind of dichotomy in modern politics between those who, on one hand, are supposedly virtuous, liberal, democratic, multilateralists, and on the other hand, the supposedly sinister “strongman”, “authoritarian”, or “populist”.

In Obama’s pompous depiction of world political trends, people like him are supposedly the epitome of a civilized, democratic legacy that is now under threat from Neo-fascists who are darkly rising to destroy an otherwise happy world order. That world order, it is presumed, was up to now guided by the magnificence of American political leadership. In short, the “Pax Americana” that prevailed for nearly seven decades following the Second World War.

Following the Helsinki summit, the Western media went full-tilt in hysterics and hyperbole.

Trump was assailed for “embracing a dictator” while repudiating Western democratic allies.

In a Washington Post article, the headline screamed: “Is Trump at war with the West?” It was accompanied by a photograph of Trump and Putin, bearing the caption: “The New Front”.

Meanwhile, a New York Times piece editorialized: “His [Trump’s] embrace of Putin is a victory dance on the Euro-American tomb.”

Another NY Times op-ed writer declared: “Trump and Putin vs. America”.

The Western establishment political and media commentary promulgates the notion that the US-led Western order is breaking down because of “populist”, “strongman” Trump. In this alleged assault on the pillars of democracy and rule of law, Trump is being aided and abetted by supposedly nasty, like-minded authoritarians like Russian leader Vladimir Putin, or other nationalistic European politicians.

The premise of this establishment narrative is that all was seemingly salubrious and convivial in the US-led order until the arrival of various renegade-type politicians, like Trump and Putin.

That premise is an absolute conceit and deception. If we look at Obama’s presidency alone, one can see how the supposed guardians of democracy and international order were the very ones who have actually done the most to decimate that order.

Obama, you will recall, was the US president who notched up seven simultaneous overseas wars conducted by American military, arguably without a shred of international legal mandate. Under international law, Obama and other senior officials in his administration should face prosecution for war crimes. He also greatly expanded the executive use of assassination with aerial drones, reckoned to have killed thousands of innocent civilians in several countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia, merely on the suspicion of being terrorists.

It was Obama who ramped up the covert war policy of his predecessor GW Bush in Syria, arming and directing terrorist proxies in a failed bid to overthrow the elected government of President Assad. That US-backed covert war in Syria, along with Obama’s overt regime-change war in Libya, largely contributed to the refugee crisis that has destabilized the politics of the European Union.

So here we have the supremely bitter irony. Obama now lectures audiences with his pseudo-gravitas about the specter of strongman politics and xenophobic populism, when in fact it was politicians like Obama who created much of the refugee problems that have given rise to anti-immigrant politics in Europe.

It really is a conceited delusion among US and European establishment politicians, pundits and media that somehow a once virtuous, law-abiding US-led Western order is being eroded by rabble rousers like Trump, Salvini, Orban and so on, all being orchestrated by a “strongman dictator” in the Kremlin.

For the record, Putin, the supposed “strongman” in the Kremlin, warned more than a decade ago in a seminal Munich speech that the international order was being eroded by rampant American unilateralism and disregard for law in its pursuit of illegal wars for US hegemony. That was at the height of US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which killed more than one million civilians and forced millions more into infernal destitution.

In truth, the Pax Americana that is presumed to have prevailed over the past 70 years was never about order, peace or justice in the world. The notion that the US guided the world with its “moral authority” and maintained stability throughout is one of the most fatuous delusions of modern history.

From the atomic holocaust in Japan and during subsequent decades, the US has waged wars non-stop in almost every year, whether from covert operations in Latin America and Africa, to full-on genocidal wars in Indochina. The past quarter-century has seen an acceleration and expansion of these US wars, sometimes with the assistance of its military axis in NATO, largely because Washington viewed that its license to kill for mass murder was unchecked after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This is the real dynamic underlying why the Western order is now seen to be collapsing. The US and its minions among European allies have destroyed any foundations of international order from their unabated wars and campaigns of mass murder. Their corporate-capitalist plunder has eviscerated the planet.

The chaos from these wars, including economic impacts of gargantuan costs to Western populations, has created social conditions which engender politics of protest, anti-establishment, anti-austerity, anti-war, anti-immigration, and so on.

If the supposed order is shaking for the establishment political class and its flunkies like Barack Obama it is because of their own criminal depredations – depredations which have been going on for decades under the guise of Pax Americana.

The writers at Monthly Review had it so presciently right years ago, when they analyzed the actual Western order as “Pox Americana” – a diseased affliction.

This is the historical context which accounts for why US and European establishments are decrying “strongmen” and “populists”. They are essentially scapegoating others for the historic failure of institutionalized Western criminality led primarily by “democratic” regimes in Washington.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stands out as the one international leader who put a brake on the US-led criminal assault on global peace. Putin’s stand first emerged with his landmark speech in Munich in 2007, and then came into clear expression when he helped put an end to the US-led covert criminal war on Syria.

That is why Putin is so vilified and demonized by the Western establishment. The poachers have been stopped from raiding the globe, and in their exasperation, they have whipped up all sorts of disparaging epithets like “strongman” and “authoritarian”.

No one has practiced more fascist-style criminality and brutality towards law and peace than the polite-sounding pseudo-democrats who have been in office for the past 70 years in the US and Europe.

The Western political establishment and its elite-driven capitalism is rotten to the core. Always has been. Its own erosion and oozing corruption is the source of the putrid smell that it now wishes to waft away by scapegoating others.

Negociando la paz en Siria

Para los chicos del diario español El País, la parte blanca del mapa de arriba es la zona controlada por el "régimen sirio"; se refieren a la parte de Siria no ocupada, o liberada, de las fuerzas terroristas de la NATO. Notamos, no obstante, un cambio de actitud: el departamento de diseño del diario coloreó de blanco, y no de rojo sangre, el territorio controlado por el gobierno. Algo es algo. Quedan algunas manchas de color: noten las zonas grises (ISIS), verdes (rejunte de lo que queda de los "militantes"), rosa (zona invadida por Turquía) y, finalmente, el gran espacio amarillo (los kurdos). El presidente sirio Bachar al Assad comenzó a hacer política con los amarillos, por lo que se prevé una salida negociada (más autonomía kurda, no a la independencia). Las conversaciones constituyen un serio riesgo para el Imperio, que se jugó a una alianza con los kurdos para partir el país. Veremos qué onda. La nota que sigue es de Natalia Sancha para ese diario. 



Título: El Asad negocia en Damasco con los kurdos apoyados por EE UU

Subtítulo: El Consejo Democrático Sirio, cuyo brazo armado controla el 27% del país, entabla negociaciones "sin condiciones" con Damasco

Texto: El Consejo Democrático Sirio (CDS) se ha reunido este viernes por primera vez con representantes del Gobierno sirio en Damasco. Se trata de la rama política de las Fuerzas Democráticas Sirias (FDS), un conglomerado de milicias respaldadas por Washington y lideradas por los combatientes kurdos de las Unidades de Protección Popular kurdas (YPG, por sus siglas en inglés) cuyas fuerzas controlan el 27% del país. “Estamos trabajando para una solución negociada en el norte de Siria”, ha dicho desde Viena el copresidente de este colectivo político, Riad Darar, en declaraciones recogidas por Reuters. Darar ha precisado que estas negaciones se llevan acabo “sin condiciones previas”.

Entre la delegación se encuentra el más alto responsable kurdo sirio, la mujer Ilham Ahmed y también representantes y milicianos kurdos, árabes, turcomanos y asirios. El copresidente del CDS ha adelantado que las conversaciones se iban a centrar en cuestiones de provisión de servicios, sin por ello descartar que se amplíe la agenda. “Es pronto para especular cómo se materializaran las negociaciones”, ha dicho a este diario en conversación telefónica Nuri Mahmoud, portavoz de las YPG. “Pero seguimos defendiendo que la política prima sobre lo militar y por ello acataremos los resultados que, esperemos, sean positivos”, ha precisado.

“No es la primera vez que se negocia aunque esta vez sea cara a cara”, explica una fuente cercana a la embajada de Rusia en Beirut. “Con la mediación rusa se produjeron negociaciones escaladas el año pasado entre el Gobierno sirio y las YPG sin que se llegara a un acuerdo definitivo”, agrega. Las presiones por parte de Turquía como de las fuerzas de oposición sirias han expulsado a los kurdos del proceso de negociación auspiciado por la ONU. Según esta fuente, el Gobierno de El Asad está dispuesto a hacer concesiones en materia de protección de la lengua kurda y cesiones para una más amplia administración local pero “no accederá a ningún tipo de autonomía, ni mucho menos de independencia”.

Tras siete años de guerra y medio millón de muertos, la coyuntura ha cambiado hoy en el país con las tropas regulares sirias acumulando victorias y recuperando esta semana el control de la sureña provincia de Deraa. En el norte del país, las tropas turcas invadieron el cantón kurdo de Afrín el pasado mes de marzo provocando el desplazamiento de 137.000 civiles. Y con ello, alejando en lo inmediato las aspiraciones de un Kurdistán independiente en Rojava.

El Consejo Democrático Sirio (CDS) anunció en junio su disposición a la apertura de un proceso de conversaciones sin condiciones con Damasco. Han sido escasas las ocasiones en las que sus fuerzas se han enfrentado al Ejército regular sirio, con el que han llegado a colaborar puntualmente para expulsar a facciones insurrectas de localidades como Al Bab o Afrin. Este nuevo acercamiento cuestiona la alianza que su brazo armado de las FDS ha mantenido hasta ahora con la coalición internacional liberada por Estados Unidos.

Las SDF han supuesto la punta de lanza de la coalición en tierra para acabar con el grueso de los yihadistas del Estado Islámico (ISIS, por sus siglas en inglés) al noreste del país y arrebatarles en octubre de 2017 su capital, Raqa. Tras proclamar la derrota del ISIS, la coalición mantiene que aún quedan bolsas yihadistas que erradicar en el país antes de retirar sus cerca de 2.000 marines y desmontar sus bases militares. Por su parte, miembros de las tribus árabes locales han expresado su descontento por lo “poco que se ha avanzado en la reconstrucción de Raqqa”, donde el 80% de las infraestructuras han sido diezmadas por bombardeos de la coalición. Kurdos y árabes tantean hoy la mesa de negociaciones y por ende la disposición de Damasco para devolver los servicios básicos a sus conciudadanos.

El principal escollo para implementar cualquier acuerdo sellado con los kurdos será Ankara quien tilda al YPG de grupo terrorista por sus vínculos con el PKK turco. Turquía ha creado una zona tapón al sur de su frontera y reiterado que expulsará al “ejército terrorista” [en referencia las FDS]. Tanto EE UU como Turquía son miembros de la OTAN, por lo que Washington se ha visto obligada a dar un paso atrás en su apoyo a los kurdos. Damasco podría optar por replicar el mismo acuerdo alcanzado en el sur del país con Israel gracias a la mediación rusa. Turquía podría aceptar el despliegue de las tropas sirias en su frontera a cambio de neutralizar las armas de su archienemigo kurdo, tal y como Israel ha aceptado el despliegue de efectivos sirios a cambio de alejar a los milicianos iraníes.


***

Actualización:

Parece que las conversaciones llegaron a buen puerto: hay un comienzo de acuerdo entre el gobierno sirio y los kurdos de ese país. La palabra clave parece ser “descentralizacón”. Leemos esta nota de hace minutos aparecida en Sputnik News:

Título: Syrian Kurds, Gov't Agree to Work Towards 'Decentralized Syria'

Texto: A Syrian Kurdish-led group revealed plans to move towards democracy and decentralization, as well as to set up special committees together with Damascus in a bid to finally put an end to the savage conflict.

Following a meeting with Syrian government officials in Damascus, the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) stated on Saturday that the sides had agreed to set up committees to develop talks on ending the ongoing conflict in the country.

The committees, which will pop up "on various levels" to sort things out in northern Syria, are set to draw up "a roadmap to a democratic, decentralized Syria", the SDC said, as quoted by Reuters.

The SDC delegation at the Damascus talks was led by Ilham Ahmed, executive head of the council.

Riad Darar, the SDC's co-chair, said prior to the talks that they were aimed at "working towards a settlement for northern Syria."

"We hope that the discussions on the situation in the north will be positive," Darar added, adding that they were being held "without preconditions."

Founded in late 2015, the SDC is the Kurdish-led political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of mostly Kurdish, but also Arab militias. During the fight against the terrorist group Daesh, they have gained control over vast stretches of land in northern and eastern Syria with the help of a US-led coalition, which make up over a quarter of the country's territory.

Mientras tanto, en la Argentina...

Posteamos hoy una linda (dolorosa, en realidad) entrevista que realizó la periodista Sharmini Peries al economista Michael Hudson (foto) días atrás. El tema es el nuevo préstamo del FMI a la Argentina. Quien quiera acceder a la versión en video de la misma puede acceder a ella en https://youtu.be/N5ZHD9-zdkQ; acá va la versión escrita, que reproducimos del sitio web UNZ Review: 


Título: Argentina’s New $50 Billion IMF Loan Is Designed to Replay Its 2001 Crisis

Epígrafe: The recently elected neoliberal government of Mauricio Macri has decided to seek a $50 billion IMF credit line, which will only enable more capital flight for the upper class and greater unpayable debt for the rest of the population, says the economist Michael Hudson.

Entrevista:

SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore.

For several months now. Argentines have been taking to the streets to protest against neoliberal austerity measures of President Mauricio Macri. The most recent such protest took place on July 9 on Argentine’s Independence Day. There have also been three general strikes thus far. In the two years since he took office, President Macri has laid off as many as 76,000 public sector workers, and slashed gas and water and electricity subsidies, leading to a tenfold increase in prices in some cases.

The government argues that all this is necessary in order to stem inflation and the decline of the currency’s value. Last month, Macri received the backing of the International Monetary Fund. The IMF agreed to provide Argentina with a $50 billion loan, one of the largest in its history. In exchange, the Macri government will deepen the austerity measures already in place.

Joining me now to analyze Argentina’s economic situation and its new IMF loan is Michael Hudson. Michael is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City. Welcome back, Michael.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be back, Sharmini.

SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, why is it that Argentina needs such a huge credit line from the IMF?

MICHAEL HUDSON: For precisely the reason that you explained. Its neoliberal policy aims at rolling back the wage increases and employment that Mrs. Kirschner, the former president, achieved. So it’s part of the class war to shrink the economy. To lower wages, you have to cut back business so as to cut back employment. Like almost all IMF loans, the purpose is to subsidize capital flight out of Argentina before this austerity occurs, so that wealthy Argentinians can take their money and run before the currency collapses.

The loan will indebt Argentina so much that its currency will continue to go down and down, chronically wrecking the economy. That’s what the IMF does. That’s its business plan. It makes a loan to subsidize capital flight, emptying out the economy of cash, leading the currency to collapse, as it has recently collapsed. As soon as the $50 billion was expended, wasted in letting wealthy Argentinians take their pesos, convert them into dollars, move them offshore – to the United States, to England, to the Dutch West Indies, and offshore banking centers – then they let the currency collapse.

The IMF model’s basic assumption, which it’s announced for the last 50 years, is that when you depreciate a currency, what you’re really lowering is the price of labor. Raw materials and capital have an international price. But when a currency goes down, it makes imports much more expensive, and that causes a price umbrella over the cost of living. Labor has to pay a higher domestic price for grain, food, oil and gas, andfor everything else.

So what Macri has done is to agree with the IMF to wage class war with a vengeance. Devaluation leaves Argentina so hopelessly indebted that it can’t possibly repay the IMF loan. So what we’re seeing is a replay of what happened in 2001.

SHARMINI PERIES: Exactly. I was going to ask you, now, that was only 17 years ago, Michael. Argentinians do have memory here. They know what happened. They experienced it as well. Now, that was back in 2001 during the economic crisis when unemployment had increased so dramatically. That country went through a series of presidents and went through a series of crises. And we saw images very similar to what we have seen in, in Greece not too long ago. Now, tell us more about that history. What exactly happened during that crisis, and then eventually how did Nestor Kirschner relieve the economy and come out of that crisis?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the IMF staff said, “Don’t make the loan. There’s no possible way Argentina can pay it. It’s all going to be made to the oligarchy for capital flight. You’re giving the IMF money for crooks, and you’re expecting the Argentine people to have to pay.” So Argentina very quickly was left broke.

Although that was 17 years ago, for the last 17 years the IMF has had a slogan: “No more Argentinas.” In other words, they said, they were never going to make a loan that is only given to oligarchs for capital flight. That’s what happened when it lent to Ukraine, to the Russian kleptocrats, and to the Greek banks to move offshore. Yet here again, we’re having a replay.

After Mrs. Kirschner came in, it was obvious to everybody, as it had been to the IMF staff (many of whom had resigned) that Argentina couldn’t pay. So about 80 percent of Argentina’s bondholders agreed to write down the debt to something that could be paid. They saw that either it’s a total default because they can’t pay, or they would write it down very substantially to what could be paid, because the IMF really made an incompetent – not incompetent, but outright corrupt – insider deal.

Unfortunately, the oligarchy had a fatal clause put in the original bond issue, saying that Argentina would agree to U.S. arbitration under U.S. law if there was any dispute. Well, after the old Argentine bonds depreciated in price – the bonds that were not renegotiated as part of the 80 percent – you had vulture funds buy them up. Especially Paul Singer, the Republican campaign donor who tends to buy politicians along with foreign government bonds. He sued, demanding 100 percent on the dollar, not the 40 cents or whatever they’d settled for. The case was assigned to the senile, dying Judge Griesa in New York City. He who said there was something about a clause that said investors have to be treated symmetrically. Argentina had said, “That’s fine, we’ll pay the other 20 percent the same as what the 80 percent of all agreed to. The majority rules.” But Griesa said, “No, you have to pay the 80 percent all the money that the 20 percent demands. That’s symmetry.” He let the hedge funds win. That set Argentina on the road to go bankrupt again, wreck the government, and bring back the oligarchy.

That ruling caused turmoil. The United States State Department set out to support the oligarchy by doing everything it could to destabilize Argentina. The Argentine people voted in a government that was supported by the United States, hoping it would be nice to them. I don’t know why foreign countries think that way, but they thought maybe if they voted neoliberal, the United States would agree to forgive some of its debt.

Well, that’s not what neoliberals do. Macri did just what you said at the beginning of the program. He announced that he was going to cut employment, stop inflation by making the working class bear all of the costs, and would borrow – actually, it was the largest loan in IMF history – the $50 billion to enable the Argentine wealthy class to move its money offshore. That’s what the IMF does.

SHARMINI PERIES: Right. So let’s imagine you are given the opportunity to resolve this issue. How would you advise the Argentine government in terms of what can they do to stabilize the economy, given the circumstances they’re facing right now?


It doesn’t have to be this way

MICHAEL HUDSON: Very simple. I’d say that this debt is an Odious Debt. There is no way Argentina can pay. The clause that bankrupted it was put in as a result of tens of thousands of professors, labor leaders, and land reformers having been assassinated. The United States financed an assassination team throughout Latin America after Pinochet in Chile, to support what was basically a proxy government. The Argentine loan said it would follow U.S. rules, not Argentine rules. That basically should disqualify that debt from having to be paid. And it should say the IMF debt is an odious debt, given under fraudulent purposes solely for purposes of capital flight.

SHARMINI PERIES: Now, Michael, just one last question. Did you want to add something to what you were saying?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, once it doesn’t pay the foreign debt, its balance of payments will be more stable. But creditors have always used violence in order to get their way. I don’t see how the Argentina situation can be solved without violence, because the creditors are using police force and covert assassination. They’re just as bad as the Dirty War that had that mass assassination period in the late, into the late 1980s and early ’90s. There’s obviously going to be not only the demonstrations that you showed, but an outright war, because it’s broken out in Argentina more drastically than anywhere else right now in Latin America, except in Venezuela.

SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, at the moment, the Fed is gradually increasing interest rates and the dollar is gaining in value. This is sucking the financial capital not only in Argentina but in many places around the world. Also, you know, they’re going to be soon in crisis as well. What is, what can the developing economies do?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Here’s the problem: When the United States raises interest rates, that causes foreign money to flow into the dollar, because the rest of the world, Europe and other areas are keeping low interest rates. So as money goes into the dollar, to take advantage of the rising interest rates, the dollar rises. That makes it necessary for Argentina or any other country, third world country, to pay more and more pesos in order to buy the dollars to pay that foreign debt.

Argentina and other Third World countries have violated the prime rule of credit: never to denominate debt in another currency that you can’t print. Now, the dollar debts become much more expensive in peso terms. As a result, throughout the world right now, you’re having a collapse of bond prices of Third World debt. Argentine bonds, Chilean bonds, African bonds, Near Eastern bonds. Third World debt bonds are plunging, because the investors realize that the countries can’t pay. The game looks like it may be over.

The good side of this is that Argentina now can join with other Third World countries and say, “We are going to redenominate the debts in our own currency, or we just won’t pay, or we will do what the world did in 1931 and announce a moratorium on intergovernmental debts for German reparations and the World War I Inter-Ally debts.” An international conference is needed to declare a moratorium and say, what is the amount that actually can be paid? The aim would be to write down third world debts to the amount that should be paid.

The principle that countries have to support is that no country should be obliged to sacrifice its own economy, its own employment, and its own independence to pay foreign creditors. Every country has a right to put its own citizens first and its own economy first before foreign creditors, especially when the loans are made under false pretenses, as the IMF has made pretending to stabilize the currency instead of subsidizing capital flight to destabilize the currency.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Michael. I thank you so much. And we’ll continue this conversation. There’s so much more to discuss, and so many countries here in this situation for that discussion as well. I thank you so much for joining us today.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Thanks. I think it’s going to get worse, so we’ll have a lot to discuss.

SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.

Los tweets de Donald

La fuerte movida tweetera del Presidente Donald Trump contra Irán, poco menos que amenazándolos con convertir a ese país en un cenicero si continuaban con sus afrentas al Imperio, nos recuerda a movidas twitteras previas contra Corea del Norte. En este nuevo estilo de diplomacia, es difícil saber cuál es el objetivo final del gobierno de los EEUU. ¿Irán? ¿El frente interno de cara a las elecciones legislativas? ¿La nueva Ruta de la Seda, que inevitablemente pasará por Irán? La nota que sigue es de Pepe Escobar para Asia Times:



Título: ‘Tweet of Mass Destruction’ ratchets up tension on Iran

Epígrafe: The Trump administration's ultimate goal is regime change in Tehran, but was this just a distraction from the 'treason' in Helsinki as US Mid-Term elections loom? Or did he just want to destabilize the Eurasian giants and their New Silk Roads?

Texto: President Trump’s late-night, all-caps Tweet of Mass Destruction threatening Iran is bound to be enshrined in the Art of Diplomacy annals.

But let’s go back to how this all started. After unilaterally pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, the Trump administration has issued what amounts to a declaration of economic war on Iran and will go no holds barred to squeeze the Islamic Republic out of the global oil market – complete with threatening allies in Europe with secondary sanctions, unless they cut all imports of Iranian oil by November 4.

This past weekend, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said he would support blocking all Middle East oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz if Iran’s European trade partners succumb to pressure from Washington and stop buying Iranian oil altogether.

Then President Hassan Rouhani followed Khamenei and warned the US about “playing with the lion’s tail.”

Rouhani, as his record attests, has always behaved as the epitome of cool diplomacy. Contrary to predictable US media spin, he never “threatened” to attack the US. His premise was that Tehran was pleased to offer Washington the “mother of all peace.” But if Trump instead decided to attack Iran, then (italics mine) that would open the way to the Mother of all Wars.


Ultimate goal: Regime change

The fact remains that the Trump administration ditched a UN-sponsored multilateral treaty and has now launched serious covert ops with the ultimate goal of regime change in Iran.

Trump’s explosion of rage, coupled with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s touting of the interests of “the long-ignored voice of the Iranian people” has been met with derision and scorn all across Iran.

Geopolitically, Russia-Iran relations remain extremely solid, as shown by the recent meeting between President Putin and Khamenei’s top foreign policy adviser Ali Akbar Velayati. As Professor Mohammad Marandi at the University of Tehran told me: “The Putin-Velayati meeting went very well. Velayati plans to go to Beijing in a few weeks. People in Iran hate Trump, and all political parties and factions have become much more united. Rouhani’s speech was widely watched and very well received.”

Khamenei and Rouhani are on the same page – and that’s very significant in itself. They now agree any negotiation with Washington is futile. Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif provided the coup de grace, tweeting that Iran had lasted millennia and had seen many empires fall. He wrapped up with an all-caps Trumpism: “BE CAUTIOUS!”

The whole soap opera is ridden with pathetic overtones as US “experts” posing as extras digress that there are only two outcomes left for Iran: capitulation or implosion of the “regime”.

Anyone claiming Tehran will capitulate shows an utter ignorance of the overall mood of defiance and scorn among the Iranian people, even as they are faced with massive economic hardship. And anyone stating there will be regime change in Tehran basically parrots a US “policy” that is just wishful thinking.

The US neo-conservatives that brought the world the failed, multi-trillion-dollar Iraq war should have been buried not six feet, but six miles under. Yet, like the Walking Dead, they will never give up.

But, in the Middle East, at the moment there are three characters who are singin’ and dancin’ like everything is going according to plan: Saudi Arabia’s Mohamed Bin Salman (MBS), his mentor, the United Arab Emirates’ Mohamed bin Zayed, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Surely they are not heeding the expert advice of former Mossad head Meir Dagan, who stated that a military attack on Iran was “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”


Deliberate distraction?

It’s always possible that Trump’s all-caps spectacular may be a ruse to distract Americans from the Helsinki “treason” scandal. That gets traction when associated to the looming mid-term elections and Trump’s absolute need to sound tough and keep the Republicans in line. Call it a brilliant Trump strategic maneuver. Or was it Putin’s?

Back to reality, the stark options would come down to either Iran becoming a US satellite or closing the Strait of Hormuz – something that for all practical purposes would collapse the global economy.

I have been assured that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has the technological means to block the Strait and would not flinch to go for it rather than yield, if the going gets tough. President Rouhani cannot resist the IRGC. The Trump administration has, in fact, forced Rouhani to show his cards. All branches of the Iranian government are now united.

War hysteria, already on, is extremely irresponsible. In the worst Strait of Hormuz scenario, the US Navy would be impotent, as Russian-made SS-N-22 Sunburn missiles could wreak havoc. Washington could only bomb from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar or Incirlik in Turkey. Neither Qatar nor Turkey is inclined to antagonize Iran.

The Pentagon would have to bomb coastal missile sites on Iran’s Persian Gulf shoreline. But these are heavily camouflaged; missiles are portable, and there’s no reliable on the ground intel. Iran only needs to fire one missile at a time. No oil tanker would possibly try to get through.

Things don’t even need to degrade towards a shooting war. All Tehran needs to do is to make the threat credible. Insurance companies would stop insuring oil carriers. No oil carrier will navigate without insurance.


Breaking Russia-China-Iran

The geopolitical game is even more complex. Velayati was in Moscow only a few days before Helsinki. Diplomatic sources say Iran and Russia are in synch – and closely coordinating policy. If the current strategy of tension persists, it raises the price of oil, which is good for both Russia and Iran.

And then there’s China. A tsunami of sanctions or not, Beijing is more likely to increase oil imports from Iran. “Experts” who claim that Iran is becoming a pawn of Russia and China are hopelessly myopic. Russia, China and Iran are already firmly aligned.

Short of war, the Trump administration’s top priority is disruption of the New Silk Roads – the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – between China and Europe. And the key economic connectivity corridor goes across Iran.

The fundamental “enemy” is China. But to make any divide-and-rule plan work, first, there’s got to be an attempt to lure Russia into some sort of entente cordiale. And in parallel, Persian destabilization is a must. After all, that’s what the Cheney regime used to describe as “the great prize”.

El Dilema de Triffin

El liderazgo militar estadounidense depende de la dominancia del dólar, el cual, por su parte, deviene para ese país en un déficit comercial permanente. Hasta Obama, el déficit comercial parecía no importarle a ningún norteamericano. Llega Trump y decide que los estadounidenses vuelvan a fabricar cosas (la doctrina “Make America Great Again”, también conocida por su acrónimo, MAGA). Esto trae aparejado un peligro: el derrumbe del dólar, y por lo tanto del Imperio. A esto se lo conoce como “Dilema de Triffin”; al respecto, acá va una linda nota de Bryce McBride aparecida hoy en Zero Hedge, de la que nos gusta casi todo excepto la última frase:

Título: Trade Deficits And The American Empire

Texto: Over the past couple of months, Donald Trump has sought to change America’s security commitments (most notably NATO) and trade agreements (most notably NAFTA) to better serve his view of American interests. Looking at these arrangements in isolation while imagining the U.S. to be a country like any other, it would appear that the U.S., by shouldering more than its share of NATO’s costs and tolerating decades of trade deficits, has been getting a raw deal. However, American military leadership depends upon global dollar dominance which in turn demands persistent trade deficits. These are the three essential aspects of America’s global empire. If you remove one, you threaten the survival of the other two and the continued existence of the American empire itself.

The American empire is, in the words of John Perkins, the author of the books “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” and “The Secret History of the American Empire,” the first truly global empire, and the first empire based on indirect economic rather than direct military power. However, it nonetheless resembles every empire the earth has ever known in its basic structure.

Empires such as the Roman Empire exhibit certain features which often, at least in the beginning, improve the lives of their subjects.

- First, imperial armies both keep the peace internally and defend against foreign invasion.

- Second, conquered nations are compelled to accept and use the empire’s money.

- Third, peace and stability and the use of a common currency cause trade to flourish.

- Finally, this increase in trade and economic activity in general permits the empire to collect the taxes and tribute payments necessary to pay for the imperial armies upon which the empire’s security depends.

Comparing the current American empire to earlier empires, we can see that the first three features of empire are present.

- First, American military power is deployed worldwide; 170 000 active-duty servicemen currently serve in 150 nations outside of the United States in support of its obligations under NATO and other alliances.

- Second, the U.S. dollar is the world’s money. As noted economics commentator Jim Rickards put it recently in his article “The U.S Dollar: A Victim Of Its Own Success,” the dollar is used for about 60% of global foreign currency reserves, 80% of global payments and almost 100% of global oil transactions.

- Third, since the end of WWII global trade and global prosperity have expanded enormously under the protection of American arms and under the guidance of dollar-based American-led international economic institutions such as the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund.

- However, while the Romans could finance their armies by levying taxes on the growing trade of their empire, the U.S. is not able to do so as it does not actually govern the nations it dominates. However, the worldwide use of the U.S. dollar does allow America to gather the wealth needed to fund its military in a manner reminiscent of the tribute payments commonly paid by nations dominated by the ancient Near Eastern empires of the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians.

As other nations need U.S. dollars to buy oil and other imports, they also need to hold U.S. dollars as foreign currency reserves. The simplest way to acquire dollars is to sell goods and services to the U.S. while accepting dollars (which will never be used to purchase American goods) in payment. Looking at the flow of goods and services, we can easily detect a pattern of tributary states sending treasure to the imperial power. Oil from the Middle East, electronics and apparel from East Asia, minerals from Africa, tropical fruits from Latin America and automobiles and automobile parts from Canada, Mexico and the E.U. all flow into the U.S. from around the world in exchange for dollars which will henceforth be used only outside the U.S. As I wrote in a previous column, the U.S. is the only country in the world able to write cheques (issue dollars) which will never be cashed (used to purchase American goods and services).

Looked at as a whole, the system works. The U.S. provides security and a common currency to the world and in return the world, made prosperous by American protection and financial integration, provides the U.S. with goods and services.

However, when examined through the lens of national accounts these flows of goods and services are identified as trade deficits. To Trump and many of his supporters, these persistent trade deficits have caused the de-industrialization of America and the elimination of millions of American manufacturing jobs. To bring these jobs back, Trump is determined to renegotiate America’s trade deals to try to bring America’s trade accounts back into balance.

As an imperial power and as the issuer of the world’s reserve currency, though, America can never have a balanced trade account. This dilemma was first noted by the Belgian economist Robert Triffin in the 1960s. If America’s trade account was in balance, foreigners would not be able to access the additional dollars needed to purchase imports from one another and to hold as reserves. Without reliable access to dollars, global trade would become very difficult as 80% of global payments are made in dollars. Were global trade to collapse, so too would global prosperity. Finally, without the tribute payments represented by its persistent trade deficits, how could America continue to fund its military commitments?

Fundamentally, Trump seemingly wants to jettison some aspects of American empire while holding on to others, but the problem is that empire is a package deal. It is simply not possible for the U.S. to eliminate its trade deficits without also giving up the benefits which flow to the U.S. (and to the rest of the world) from the dollar’s acceptance as the world’s reserve currency.

Meanwhile, other countries who understand the damage Trump’s incompatible aims may inflict on global trade and prosperity are busy constructing alternatives to the U.S. dollar for international payments and reserves.

Most notably, the Chinese are busy giving their currency, the Yuan, a greater international presence. However, aware of Triffin’s dilemma, China does not want the Yuan to become a global reserve currency. Instead, according to Jim Rickards’ recent article, they appear to be working with the Russians, the Iranians and other countries to create a system where trade is conducted and balances are recorded using some form of distributed ledger technology (similar to Bitcoin), with any net balances settled in gold (the original global reserve currency) at the end of each quarter.

Alternatively, the International Monetary Fund is also working to create a cryptocurrency version of their existing reserve currency (called the ‘Special Drawing Right’ or SDR) which could similarly be used to denominate, record and settle international trade.

Whichever trade settlement system ends up being adopted, the writing appears to be on the wall for the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. When foreign dollar holders begin seeing dollars becoming either unavailable or less useful for trade, they will not want to hold them as reserves. If they begin to dump them to buy gold or SDRs, the dollar’s value will collapse against other currencies. If, as a consequence, foreigners become unwilling to accept payment in dollars that are fast losing their value, the American government will no longer be able to afford a global military presence. The resulting economic and geopolitical uncertainty will undoubtedly disrupt world trade, threatening both global prosperity and security. On the plus side, though, America’s trade accounts will once again be in balance as Americans holding newly-depreciated dollars will no longer be able to afford foreign goods even as American goods produced with now-cheaper American resources will find ready buyers abroad.

All in all, it would probably be better for everyone involved to continue to tolerate persistent American trade deficits.