world war 3

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The Trouble with Rand Paul

Rand Paul just endorsed a man who is deeply hostile to human liberty.

Perhaps that’s Rand’s idea of playing politics? Come to the table, strike a deal, get what you can. Trouble is, it’s tough striking a good deal when the guy on the other side of the table believes that the government should be allowed to claim — without having to produce any evidence whatsoever — that certain people are terrorists, and therefore should be detained indefinitely without any kind of due process.

That’s textbook tyranny.

Yes, I would have [signed the NDAA]. And I do believe that it is appropriate to have in our nation the capacity to detain people who are threats to this country, who are members of al Qaeda. Look, you have every right in this country to protest and to express your views on a wide range of issues but you don’t have a right to join a group that has killed Americans, and has declared war against America. That’s treason. In this country we have a right to take those people and put them in jail. If I were president I would not abuse this power. But people who join al Qaeda are not entitled to rights of due process under our normal legal code. They are entitled instead to be treated as enemy combatants.

Mitt Romney

Except, if the government had any evidence they were really members of al-Qaeda and engaged in a war against America they could be charged with offenses under current laws and tried in front of a jury of their peers. As was proven when Judge Katherine Forrest struck down the indefinite detention provision of the NDAA as unconstitutional, the real detention targets are people like the ones who brought the case — writers, investigative journalist and whistleblowers: people like Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Jennifer Bolen, and Birgitta Jonsdottir.

Rand Paul might have done some good work trying to filibuster the Patriot Act, but endorsing Mitt Romney goes beyond the pale. The NDAA is Romney’s most egregious transgression against liberty, but not far behind are his desire to start a war against Iran, to increase military spending, to start a trade war with China and his belief that corporations are people.

I know I will never agree with any politician on every single dimension of every single issue, and that to some extent politics will always involve compromise. Certainly, I disagree with Ron Paul on some issues. But Mitt Romney’s stances on these issues seem much, much, much closer to Barack Obama than they do to Ron Paul. In fact, he might as well have endorsed Obama for President.

And the Ron Paul supporters are noticing: Rand has probably burnt most bridges to his Father’s supporters now. His Facebook page has seen a huge outpouring of fury:

Just lost a lot of faith in a man I otherwise adored.

You suck Rand! Traitor!

That’s why this country is doomed! Even the person you trust is a sell-out. I’m done with politics, people deserve what they get. Let the country run itself to the ground, and still people will not understand what freedom and self-responsibility is about. People want big gov’t, big brother every step of the way. Well, they got it. The rest of us, might as well try to move to another country or find an island and move there.

I knew I’d never vote for Mitt… Now I know I’ll never vote for Rand.

He has fully sold out to the bankers

Endorsing Romney is tantamount to an utter sell-out of conservative principles.

Did George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison try to compromise with King George? Or — when it became obvious that they were facing tyranny — did they stand up for the principles of liberty?

I have always been uncomfortable with the children of politicians becoming politicians. Every anointed child feels like a step away from meritocracy. Dynasties are dangerous, because the dynasty itself comes to be more important than the qualities of the politicians. Who would Rand Paul be if he wasn’t Ron Paul’s son? Just another neocon. Neocons often have a few “unfashionable” libertarian or constitutionalist sympathies; look at Charles Krauthammer. But — unlike Ron Paul — the neocon never has the spine to do much about their libertarian or constitutionalist sympathies. They just ride on the establishment steamroller, into foreign occupations, empire building, corporate welfare, and banking bailouts. Into Iraq, and soon into Iran.

Rand Paul just got on the steamroller.

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Enter the Swan

Charles Hugh Smith (along with many, many, many others) thinks there may be a great decoupling as the world sinks deeper into the mire, and that the dollar could be set to benefit:

This “safe haven” status can be discerned in the strengthening U.S. dollar. Despite a central bank (The Federal Reserve) with an avowed goal of weakening the nation’s currency (the U.S. dollar), the USD has been in an long-term uptrend for a year–a trend I have noted many times here, starting in April 2011.

That means a bet in the U.S. bond or stock market is a double bet, as these markets are denominated in U.S. dollars. Even if they go nowhere, the capital invested in them will gain purchasing power as the dollar strengthens.

All this suggests a “decoupling” of the U.S. bond and stock markets from the rest of the globe’s markets. Put yourself in the shoes of someone responsible for safekeeping $100 billion and keeping much of it liquid in treacherous times, and ask yourself: where can you park this money where it won’t blow up the market just from its size? What are the safest, most liquid markets out there?

The answer will very likely point the future direction of global markets.

Smith is going along with one of the most conventional pieces of conventional wisdom: that in risky and troubled times investors will seek out the dollar as a haven. That’s what happened in 2008. That’s what is happening now as rates on treasuries sink to all-time-lows. And that’s what has happened throughout the era of petrodollar hegemony.

But the problem with conventions is that they are there to be broken, the problem with conventional wisdom is that it is there to be killed, roasted and served on a silver platter.

The era of petrodollar hegemony is slowly dying, and the assumptions and conventions of that era are dying with it. For now, the shadow of that old world is still flailing on like Wile E. Coyote, hovering in midair.

As I wrote last week:

How did the dollar die? First it died slowly — then all at once.

The shift away from the dollar has quickly manifested itself in bilateral and multilateral agreements between nations to ditch the dollar for bilateral and multilateral trade, beginning with the chief antagonists China and Russia, and continuing through Iran, India, Japan, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia.

So the ground seems to have fallen out from beneath the petrodollar world order.

Enter the Swan:

We know the U.S. is a big and liquid (though not really very transparent) market. We know that the rest of the world — led by Europe’s myriad issues, and China’s bursting housing bubble — is teetering on the edge of a precipice, and without a miracle will fall (perhaps sooner, rather than later).

But we also know that America is inextricably interconnected to this mess. If Europe (or China or both) disintegrates, triggering (another) global default cascade, America will be stung by its European banking exposures, its exposures to global energy markets and global trade flows. Simply, there cannot be financial decoupling, not in this hyper-connected, hyper-leveraged world.

And would funds surge into US Treasuries even in such an instance? Maybe initially — fund managers have been conditioned by years of convention to do so. But how long  can fund managers accept negative real rates of return? Or — much more importantly — how long will the Fed accept such a surge? The answer is not very long at all. Bernanke’s economic strategy has been focussed  on turning treasuries into a losing investment, on the face of it to “encourage risk-taking” (or — much more significantly — keep the Treasury’s borrowing costs cheap).

All of this suggests a global crash or proto-crash will be followed by a huge global money printing operation, probably spearheaded by the Fed. Don’t let the Europeans fool anyone, either — Germany will not let the Euro crumble for fear of money printing. When push comes to shove they will print and fiscally consolidate to save their pet project (though perhaps demanding gold as collateral, and perhaps kicking out some delinquents). China will spew trillions of stimulus money into more and deeper malinvestment (why have ten ghost cities when you can have fifty? Good news for aggregate demand!).

So Paul Krugman will likely get something much closer to what he claims to want. Problem solved?

Nope. You can’t solve deep-rooted structural problems — malinvestment, social change, deindustrialisation, global trade imbalances, systemic fragility, financialisation, imperial decline, cultural stupefaction (etc, etc, etc) — by throwing money at problems. All throwing more money can do is buy a little more time (and undermine the currency). The problem with that is that a superficial recovery fools policy-makers, investors and citizens into believing that problems are fixed when they are not. Eventually — perhaps slowly, or perhaps quickly — unless the non-monetary problems are truly dealt with (very unlikely), they will boil over again.

As the devaluation heats up things will likely become a huge global game of beggar thy neighbour. A global devaluation will likely increase the growing tensions between the creditor and debtor nations to breaking point. Our current system of huge trade imbalances guarantees that someone (the West) is getting a free lunch , and that someone else (the Rest) is getting screwed. Such a system is fundamentally fragile, and fundamentally unstable. Currency wars will likely give way to economic wars, which may well give way to subterfuge and proxy wars as creditors seek their pound of flesh, and debtors seek to cast off their chains. Good news, then, for weapons contractors and the security state.

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The National Attack Authorization Act?

We all know that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by President Obama on New Year’s Eve contained a now-struck-down provision to authorise the indefinite detention of American citizens on US soil.

But did you know that the NDAA also paves the way for war with Iran?

From Dennis Kucinich:

Section (6) rejects any United States policy that would rely on efforts to contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran. Section (7) urges the President to reaffirm the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear-weapons capability and opposition to any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to Iranian enrichment.

This language represents a significant shift in U.S. policy and would guarantee that talks with Iran, currently scheduled for May 23, would fail. Current U.S. policy is that Iran cannot acquire nuclear weapons. Instead, H. Res. 568 draws the “redline” for military action at Iran achieving a nuclear weapons “capability,” a nebulous and undefined term that could include a civilian nuclear program. Indeed, it is likely that a negotiated deal to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran and to prevent war would provide for Iranian enrichment for peaceful purposes under the framework of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty with strict safeguards and inspections. This language makes such a negotiated solution impossible.

At the same time, the language lowers the threshold for attacking Iran. Countries with nuclear weapons “capability” could include many other countries like Japan or Brazil. It is an unrealistic threshold.

The Former Chief of Staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated that this resolution “reads like the same sheet of music that got us into the Iraq war.”

The notion of a “nuclear weapons capability” seems like a dangerously low standard. Let us not forget that Mossad, the CIA and the IAEA agree that Iran does not have a bomb, is not building one and has no plans to build one.

But the bill clearly spells out its intent:

SEC. 1222. UNITED STATES MILITARY PREPAREDNESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

Section 2 (A) pre-positioning sufficient supplies of aircraft, munitions, fuel, and other materials for both air- and sea-based missions at key forward locations in the Middle East and Indian Ocean;

(B) maintaining sufficient naval assets in the region necessary to signal United States resolve and to bolster United States capabilities to launch a sustained sea and air campaign against a range of Iranian nuclear and military targets, to protect seaborne shipping, and to deny Iranian retaliation against United States interests in the region;

(D) conducting naval fleet exercises similar to the United States Fifth Fleet’s major exercise in the region in March 2007 to demonstrate ability to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and to counter the use of anti-ship missiles and swarming high-speed boats.

As Kucinich notes:

This is an authorization for the use of military force against Iran. It ignores the warnings of both current and former U.S. top military brass who have spoken in opposition to the use of military force against Iran, including former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. A February 2012 poll demonstrated that less than 20% of the Israeli public supports an Israeli strike on Iran if approved by the United States. Congress must avoid the same mistakes it made in the Iraq war and reject any language that can be construed as authorizing war against Iran.

It seems like the framers of the bill are exceptionally keen on striking Iran as quickly as possible. Maybe they are receiving lots of money from defence contractors?

Unsurprisingly, the biggest Congressional recipient of donations from defence contractors was Howard “Buck” McKeon, the chairman of the armed services committee who also happens to be the sponsor of the NDAA:

The fact that Ron Paul is the number two recipient is a sign that not all defence contractors are keen to hit Iran. But some are.

Still, even though the bill hints very strongly toward it, it doesn’t mean that it is going to happen. Congressmen might be hungry for a war but the military — already overstretched — isn’t. Admiral Fallon was reportedly the force that kept Bush from hitting Iran, and it would not be surprising to see the Pentagon put up fierce opposition to a future war with Iran. It would be a long, expensive war, with the potential of massive negative side-effects, like dragging in other regional powers, disrupting global trade, and squeezing the US economy by spiking the oil price.

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Peter Schiff Gets China

Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.

Sun Tzu

From Slate:

Slate: Your debate opponent Minxin Pei wrote in Foreign Policy last summer, “Although Asia today may have one of the world’s most dynamic economies, it does not seem to play an equally inspiring role as a thought leader.” Do you agree that China falls short on innovation?

Schiff: No. There’s a lot of creativity coming out of Asia, a lot of patents. The big problem for countries like China and India is that they still subsidize the U.S. They buy our Treasury bonds and lend us all this money so we can keep consuming. That’s a big subsidy and a heavy burden.

Slate: Doesn’t China need to lend us money so we’ll buy Chinese exports?

Schiff: No. They can use their money to develop their own economy, produce better and more abundant products for their own citizens. It’s a farce to think that the only thing China can do with its output and savings is lend it to the U.S. government, especially when we can’t pay it back.

Now I have not always seen eye to eye with Peter Schiff; I am still waiting for the hyperinflation that Schiff told us would hit sometime in 2010 (clue: hyperinflation is not coming without something like an oil shock, a war, a breakdown in the global trade infrastructure). But it’s nice to know that I am not just a lone voice in the wilderness.

It is sad and perplexing how many “serious thinkers” have not understood the fundamental fragility of the present arrangement.

As I wrote over the weekend (and as I have continually thrusted home over the past 6 months):

The truth is that there is no such thing as a service economy. Our economy today (other than in places like, say, North Korea) is truly global. All of those service workers — and every cent of “services” GDP — is supported by real-world productivity, much of which takes place outside the West — the productivity of the transport system, the productivity of manufacturers, the productivity of agriculture.

The continued prosperity of the West is dependent on the continued flow of goods and services into the West.

Schiff concludes the interview by describing what he believes will take place once Eurasia thrusts off America’s demands for a free lunch:

We’d have to immediately cut government spending dramatically. Diminish our consumption. We wouldn’t be going to the malls and buying stuff. The whole U.S. economy would have to restructure along the lines of Americans being frugal, saving their money, and working harder. A lot of government workers would have to lose their jobs. Those who didn’t would suffer big cuts in their pay. People who worked in the service sector — in banking, health care, or education — would also struggle if China stopped subsidizing us.

The first choice America will face is whether she will choose to continue to try to run her foreign military empire, or instead to maintain domestic infrastructure. The greater danger is that furious Western politicians might just go and start World War 3, in the name of trying to maintain American geostrategic primacy.

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The Uniting States of Eurasia

I have, these last few months, been documenting the current state of geopolitics — specifically the growing isolation of the West, the ditching of the dollar as the global reserve currency, the growing unity between the authoritarian Eurasian nations, and the brewing storm in the middle east between Israel and Iran.

Now another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

From The Sun:

Pakistan yesterday warned Britain to help stop the American “Drone Wars” that are slaughtering hundreds of its innocent civilians.

The nuclear power chillingly declared it “has the means” to retaliate unless the carnage ceases.

Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Britain Wajid Shamsul Hasan told The Sun in an exclusive interview that his country’s relations with America are at their lowest ebb.

He said: “Patience is definitely reaching exhaustion levels.” Mr Hasan said Pakistan backs the War on Terror waged by Britain and the US.

But he urged PM David Cameron to condemn US drone attacks on al-Qaeda and Taliban training camps in the north west of his country — dubbing them as “war crimes” and “little more than state executions”.

Tough-talking Mr Hasan also declared Pakistan would have no choice but to support Iran if “aggressive” Israel attacks it

This isn’t a joke. This isn’t “just rhetoric”. This is Eurasia uniting to keep America out, to trample American and Israeli interests, and to dominate geopolitics. Let me be clear: this is the systemic and complete failure of 40 years of American foreign and domestic policy. 

From Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard (pp. 31):

[H]ow America manages Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania (Australia) geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.

With Eurasia uniting around Russia and China (exemplified by their joint veto on Syria) it seems like America — stripped by globalisation of her productive base, and thus dependent on Eurasian resources and manufacturing — is about to lose the colossal free lunch she has enjoyed since the 1970s. And American aggression to impose its will on the Eurasian powers is becoming less and less viable. America is not only deeply in debt to her enemies, but would find herself gravely injured by any future trade war.

Of course, there is a path forward for America. But it is not the path desired by the current administration:

A sensible American plan going forward would recognise [these issues], and would be developing the means and the infrastructure to end America’s free lunch — specifically, through redeveloping American manufacturing capacity and supply chains, and scaling back America’s role as global policeman. Unfortunately, I see no such thing from government, and very little from private industry. America is clinging onto the old foreign policy doctrines — that if America is powerful enough, and if it can retain its role as global hegemon and world policeman, then it will always be free to consume a chunk of the rest of the world’s production and resources, because its currency will forever be the global reserve. But that simply isn’t true — Russia and China have already ditched the dollar for bilateral trade.

But this is bigger than just the implications for America. We are moving into a new era; a new world order, a multi-polar (bipolar? tripolar? apolar?) world.

What will this mean for the rest of the world and all her citizens? I have very little clue — but hopefully not world war, or trade war, or proxy war. Hopefully America will gracefully accept the end of American hegemony. Hopefully the new powers will be gracious and fair toward the old ones. Hopefully the new world will be friendlier to liberty, friendlier to freedom.

But given that the new bloc’s powers all exude authoritarian rhetoric, I doubt it.

Most concerningly, regular readers will be aware that Pakistan are the second Eurasian power to pledge military support to Iran in the case of an Israeli attack. These nations know the score:  the last hope for American imperial hegemony is to bring the Arab Spring to Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Islamabad.

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The New Cold War

The United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia-Pacific region.

— Barack H. Obama

From al-Jazeera:

When it comes to China policy, is the Obama administration leaping from the frying pan directly into the fire? In an attempt to turn the page on two disastrous wars in the greater Middle East, it may have just launched a new Cold War in Asia – once again, viewing oil as the key to global supremacy.

The new policy was signalled by President Obama himself on November 17 in an address to the Australian Parliament in which he laid out an audacious – and extremely dangerous – geopolitical vision. Instead of focusing on the greater Middle East, as has been the case for the last decade, the United States will now concentrate its power in Asia and the Pacific.

“My guidance is clear,” he declared in Canberra. “As we plan and budget for the future, we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.”

Given that a proliferation of American military hardware and components — including crucial semiconductors — are now made in China, the notion of America truly asserting itself on the Asia-Pacific region is absurd. If relations with China breaks down then trade with China breaks down, and America loses the ability to manufacture and import certain military hardware. Furthermore, it loses the free lunch of Chinese goods that furnish the heartland of American consumerism, and placate an American people whose real incomes and purchasing power have consistently fallen since the 1980s. Worst of all, it jeopardises the global energy infrastructure upon which America’s agribusiness and infrastructure depends. While America is moving closer to being able to exploit “tough oil” hotspots in North Dakota, Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, those oil production capacities cannot be brought online overnight.

Not only this, but America funds her military adventurism through unsustainable debt acquisition (a huge part of which is Chinese-held) rather than productive output. The strange reality is that American assertiveness against China can be cut off by China refusing to buy America’s increasingly debased debt. Unsurprisingly, China is already reducing her American debt holdings.

Simply, American attempts to assert itself on China risks alienating a nation upon which America is totally and inexorably dependent. While this is difficult to recognise for blustering “national security” neo-conservatives like Mitt Romney — the archangel of American imperial decline — or Obama, it is as inescapable and undeniable as the sunrise.

The remedy is not more American imperialism. It is not more debt. It is not more bravado or self-aggrandizement. It is an open and honest commitment to the truth — America’s imperial strategy, based on oil supremacy and the petrodollar — is an anachronism. Its time has come and gone. To get over this hump America needs to commit to a greater degree of energy, and manufacturing independence. American imperial policy acts as a humungous subsidy on the price of oil. Ending such a subsidy will allow the free market to do its work, and make all kinds of alternative energy — from solar, to hydro-electric, to synthetic oil, to thorium – far more competitive.

Only by accepting the changing realities of geopolitics can America prepare herself for the coming realities of the 21st Century.

Further Reading:

The Only Chinese Hard Landing will be on America’s Head 

America’s Eurasian Endgame

Huntsman Cable: China and US Trade War Heating Up

Team America: World Police

The Problem with Military Keynesianism

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Right Data, Wrong Lesson

Maybe I’m a masochist, but I read Krugman’s blog every day. My reasoning for this is mostly that I place great importance on trying to understand the views of those who I disagree with. This isn’t simply about open-mindedness — although that plays a big part — but the only way to really win an argument is to understand the views of your opponent better than they do, and then explain to them why they are wrong.

I also hate how the political internet has evolved in two directions: self-congratulatory back-rubbing niches where everyone agrees with one another, and on the other hand flame wars where nobody tries to understand anyone else’s perspectives. Nothing breeds stupidity like polarisation.

Anyway, Prof. Krugman has an interesting graphic today:

I’ve been playing around with the IMF’s historical public debt database, which has long-term information on ratios of debt to GDP. And you really have to marvel, given that historical record, at the deficit panic now so widespread. Here’s debt as a percentage of GDP in Britain, back to 1830:

That uptick at the end — you’ll see it if you squint — is what’s driving the Cameron government’s insistence on slashing spending in a liquidity trap.

It’s also interesting to note — contrary to what you often hear — that at the time Keynes was writing, and calling for fiscal stimulus, Britain was substantially deeper in debt than Britain or the United States are now.

No doubt, Cameron’s deficit-reduction obsession is not sound. George Osborne might wax about Britain having the lowest CDS spreads in Europe, but that’s really the result of Britain having its own currency, not the result of austerity. That’s not to defend Labour’s record — they did waste a lot of money, and more than anything else that money was wasted on “liberal interventionism” in the middle east — a policy which Cameron doesn’t seem to have any problem continuing.

The point on this issue is that the UK’s infrastructure needs investment in a number of areas — roads are overcrowded, fibre optic broadband does not reach many areas, the youth faces a housing crisis, etc — and an economic contraction like this is probably the best time to do this spending, to reduce unemployment, and put money in workers’ pockets.

But that graph doesn’t really say much about this issue — the graph’s true meaning is a tale of imperial overstretch, a tale of debt acquired by a colonial power playing world policeman, and trying to maintain the status quo of the old world order.

Sound familiar?

Imperial Britain’s debt load hit its peak at the very point when its empire crumbled into the sand. This is not a co-incidence, and the good news for America is that once Britain ended its global role, growth soon returned, and Britain’s debt-to-GDP ratio fell back to a sustainable level.

Of course, Britain’s change of course happened in the context of a global conflict that ended with the use of nuclear weapons.

I hope American imperialism does not end within a similar context.

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Is the Middle East About to Explode?

It looks like Israel and America’s secret war on Iran has finally provoked a response.

From AP:

Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency says the country’s armed forces have shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that violated Iranian airspace along its eastern border.

The report says the plane was an RQ170 type drone and is now in the possession of Iran’s armed forces. The Fars news agency is close to the powerful Revolutionary Guard.

Iran is locked in a dispute with the U.S. and its allies over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program, which the West believes is aimed at the development of nuclear weapons. Iran denies the accusations, saying its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

Iran’s response to the downed U.S. drone’s violation of its airspace will not be limited to the country’s borders, a military source told state television.

“The Iranian military’s response to the American spy drone’s violation of our airspace will not be limited to Iran’s borders any more,” Iran’s Arabic language Al Alam television quoted the military source as saying, without giving details.

Iran said in July it had shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane over the holy city of Qom, near its Fordu nuclear site.

Why is this happening?

As I wrote last month, a new middle eastern war can provide a lot of opportunities to the Western establishment:

  1. Create a new post-9/11-style hard-to-question patriotism — “There’s a war on — we all need to rally together around the flag — the complainers and protestors must hate America”
  2. Put America back to work — in weapons factories, and on the front lines.
  3. Give the economy a large Keynesian injection — through war spending.
  4. Take out Iran, a powerful enemy of America — and send a threatening message to other uppity Eurasian autocracies like Russia and China.
  5. Curtail civil liberties & censor the internet — “There’s a war on — we all need to rally together around the flag — and those who don’t must be working to undermine America”

The real danger here is that this won’t solely be a middle eastern war. Israel and America have grossly miscalculated the odds of drawing Russia and China into a global confrontation. Russia and China want a new world order centred around themselves, not America, and they will grab this opportunity to dethrone the West.

Russia is already supplying Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime with cruise missiles.

Western policy has been built around a false cornerstone of interdependence, the idea that there can be no war between China and America because America is dependent on Chinese goods, and China is dependent on the American monetary system. Nothing could be further from the truth — America (and its consumeristic zombie hordes) need China far more than China needs America. China’s dollar reserves are a luxury, not a necessity, and they are a luxury that can be thrown away in the name of Chinese dominance in Eurasia and the Pacific.

Of course, although a new middle eastern or global war will be an economic, political, social and humanitarian disaster, it will be very profitable for weapons contractors, and provide a large boost to aggregate demand.

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Jeffrey Goldberg Calls For War With Iran?

Jeffrey Goldberg, foreign policy hawk, is making the case for some more “liberal” interventionism.

From Bloomberg:

An Iran with nuclear weapons may be unbearable for Israel. It would further empower Israel’s terrorist enemies, who would be able to commit atrocities under the protection of an atomic umbrella. It would mean the end of the peace process, as no Arab state in the shadow of a nuclear Iran would dare make a separate peace with Israel. And it isn’t too much to imagine that some of Iran’s more mystically minded leaders, mesmerized by visions of the apocalypse, would actually consider using a nuclear weapon on Israel — a country so small that a single detonation could cripple it permanently.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who once told me he believes that Iran is led by a “messianic, apocalyptic cult,” is correct to view Iran as a threat to his country’s existence.

[President Barack Obama] has said, repeatedly, that an Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable to the U.S. Many Israelis, and many Americans, think Obama is soft on such matters. But I believe, based on interviews inside and outside the White House, that he would consider using force — missile strikes, mainly — to stop the Iranians from crossing the nuclear threshold.

We’ve been here before.

From Goldberg’s 2002  New Yorker piece calling for American intervention in Iraq:

Saddam Hussein never gave up his hope of turning Iraq into a nuclear power … There is some debate among arms-control experts about exactly when Saddam will have nuclear capabilities. But there is no disagreement that Iraq, if unchecked, will have them soon … There is little doubt what Saddam might do with an atomic bomb or with his stocks of biological and chemical weapons.

The trouble is, no evidence was ever found that Saddam Hussein had any weapons of mass-destruction. But that didn’t stop the military-Keynesians who steamrollered into Baghdad before embarking on almost a decade of wasteful, expensive occupation at cost to the American taxpayer.

In a late 2002 debate in Slate, Goldberg described Hussein as “uniquely evil” and advocated an invasion on a moral basis:

There is consensus belief now that Saddam could have an atomic bomb within months of acquiring fissile material. … The administration is planning today to launch what many people would undoubtedly call a short-sighted and inexcusable act of aggression. In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.

Yes — profound morality.

Because, of course, war, imperialism, torture and mutilation are “profoundly moral” acts.

For those with strong stomachs, here’s some more explicit pictures of that “profound morality” guiding American “liberal” interventionism.

Goldberg was wrong about Iraq, and he’s wrong about Iran. Far from plunging the middle east into the throes of war, an Iranian nuclear weapon could very well stabilise the region under the shadow of mutually-assured destruction — the same force that stabilised relations between the Soviet Union and America.

The big difference, though is that with Iraq there was no threat that any “liberal” interventionism would spill over into a wider regional war.

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Coalition of the Unwilling

Obama and Sarkozy haven’t yet been fully won around to the military-Keynesian view on Iran.

From Y-Net:

According to a Monday report in the French website “Arret sur Images,” after facing reporters for a G20 press conference on Thursday, the two presidents [Obama & Sarkozy] retired to a private room, to further discuss the matters of the day.

The conversation apparently began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington’s strong objection to the move.

The conversation then drifted to Netanyahu, at which time Sarkozy declared: “I cannot stand him. He is a liar.” According to the report, Obama replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”

French President Barack Obama that he could not “stand” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that he thinks the Israeli premier “is a liar.”

If only Netanyahu made the economic case for war against Iran more clearly! He could adopt the tones of, say, Paul Krugman and frame it in terms of the boost to aggregate demand that a new middle eastern war would give the cash-strapped American economy! 

Heck, maybe Netanyahu should go the whole hog and declare that the only thing that can save America from the horrors of the liquidity trap is World War 3! After all, the military-Keynesians say that World War 2 “brought us out of the Great Depression?”

I apologise for the sarcasm. I’m glad that the Western powers are fragmented, and that Netanyahu is as divisive a figure as ever, because it makes it significantly less likely that they will intervene and that this saga will end in some kind of middle eastern or global conflagration — because unlike the military-Keynesians, I recognise the destructive effects war has to infrastructure, to productivity, to capital and labour markets, and to economic confidence.

Further, I recognise that a nuclear-armed Iran will finally bring a counter-balance to a middle east overshadowed by a nuclear-armed Israel, forcing the Zionists and Muslims to achieve a lasting peace. Iran seeks nuclear arms as a counter-balance, not as an offensive force. The vast majority of middle easterners want iPads, cars, roads, Coca Cola and economic development, rather than nuclear conflagration. There does exist a tiny minority of religious fundamentalists — some of whom are Jewish, and some of whom are Muslim — who wish to exterminate the other side. But nuclear-armed nations including Israel, Pakistan and America have had governments led by religious fundamentalists without incident, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that a nuclear-armed Ahmadinejad would be any more threatening to world-peace than a nuclear-armed George W. Bush. Bush, lest we forget, was a former cocaine addict, alcoholic and religious fundamentalist who believed he could personally communicate with the Almighty.