LET'S MENTION THE "P" WORD
Protectionism produced the goose that laid the golden egg. Free trade is killing it.
Protectionism: The policy of controlling imports and/or exports in an effort to achieve a specific objective. For example, a country may throw up tariff walls and other controls in an effort to get an "infant" industry started within the country or to promote expansion of an industry vital to defense. (Dictionary of Economics and Business, by Nemmers and Janzen)
"Isn't the primary role of government to take care of the people?" My friend's question was really a statement. He believes the government's role of taking care of the people is a self-evident truth. Though we are life-long friends, he considers himself a liberal and me, that most dangerous of breeds, a true believer.
Had he asked, "Isn't the primary role of government to protect the people?" I could have responded in the affirmative. The difference in phraseology is subtle, but very significant. The prime role of government is protecting the God-given rights and property of the people. It isn't to take care of them. A basic premise of self-government is that, given the tools of freedom, adult Citizens are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. That's what self-government is about.
Protection is one of the few legitimate functions of limited government. This includes protecting the people and their property from all forms of foreign invasion, and providing an honest and stable currency and monetary system. In other words, guarding the borders and protecting the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A legitimate government, of the people, by the people, and for the people, cannot go far beyond that without assuming the trappings prerequisite to tyranny. Government cannot play nursemaid to some without being an oppressor to others.
Obviously, our government has gone far beyond its original Constitutional mandate. It jumped the track some decades ago, and is no longer what it was intended to be. It has become an unlimited government, serving as a nursemaid to an ever-increasing few and oppressor to the many.
This reversal of purpose is reflected in almost every aspect of political, economic, and social life. A very real Orwellization process has cast a broad and dark shadow over a once free and prosperous land. It's reflected in the language as well as institutional change. A Newspeak is being foisted upon, and enforced against, the people. Progressive reformers have produced a political system totally alien to the one our founders initiated. Nowhere is this demonstrated any more clearly than in the age-old battle between advocates of free-trade vs. protectionism. Our Constitution provided for free-trade within and among the several States within the union, (interstate commerce) while protecting those States from all nature of external invasion.
While protectionism would seem good by definition, it has nonetheless become the "P" word no establishment politician can afford to advocate or defend. International free-trade, is considered good by institutional fiat. Half a century of internationalist propaganda has said free trade is good, and that's good enough for most people. The idea is very easy to sell to ill-informed politicians and the great unwary public. First of all, anything spelled F-R-E-E simply has to be good. Since international trade is obviously good, and sometimes quite necessary, free trade is very easily sold to the public as an obviously good thing. Conventional wisdom has it that to condemn free trade, is like condemning freedom and justice. The siren lure of cheap imports is used to convince politician and citizen alike that import invasion is a good kind of invasion.
In reality, the freedom of free trade applies most of all to predatory capital interests, to operate globally without regulatory shackles, and thereby maximize their power and profits. It does this, of course, through the exploitation of labor and natural resources without regard to any local or national interest, or the interests of any people impacted. Under international free trade policy, no nation is free to regulate trade in accordance with its own national interests, or to protect the interests of its people from the damaging impacts of import invasion. In other words, free trade, under the deceptive guise of "freedom of the marketplace, and international laissez faire" negates the legitimate role of governments to protect their citizens freedom from foreign invasion.
The consumer's freedom to purchase inexpensive imports is a very pervasive argument. Protection from import invasion is seen as depriving the consumer of the fullest possible range of choices at the lowest possible prices. All of us are eager to take advantage of bargains. Thus our own self-interest is used as a tool to seduce us into becoming unwitting instruments of bad policy and allies of predatory capital against our own interests.
Protectionism is much more than just a trade policy. It protects the whole collective people — their standard of living, and their marketplace, from unwanted cheap-labor competition and the export of industries and jobs. It's as simple as that! All the arguments in favor of free-trade, are eclipsed by this single all-important benefit. Yet how many people see this clear and simple truth?
The proponents of free trade go out of their way to prove that protectionism actually means attack-ism. In true Orwellian Newspeak fashion, the meanings of words have been reversed. Protectionism, it is said, attacks the consumers' pocket-book by making imported goods either unavailable or prohibitively expensive. It forces Americans to purchase American-made goods at higher prices.
The answer to import invasion, we're told, is to become an export oriented economy. In other words, foist our production on other nations whether they want it or not. What's wrong with reclaiming our own market, protecting it, and producing for it? What's wrong, apparently, is that it is too sensible. It would tie the hands of big capital, and force it to be responsive to the needs of labor — the key ingredient to a balanced economy.
Our mis-representatives in Washington seem to suffer from the surprisingly common "lack-of-common-sense" malady — making common sense one of the most uncommon commodities in our capital today. By some truly remarkable process of reasoning they deem it desirable for the Japanese to make cars for the American market and for us Americans to make cars for the Japanese market. Common sense tells me that it makes more sense for us Americans to make our own cars and televisions than to have somebody five thousand miles away make them for us. The cost of shipping goods needlessly back and forth across the Pacific costs us a lot of money. As recently as the 50's and 60's, it was almost universally recognized that it made more sense to produce for ourselves than to depend on others — now imports which were once luxuries have become necessities in spite of the high costs of shipping, and we're no longer an independent nation!
In an export oriented business, the worker is not considered the customer by his employer. This disconnect between capital and labor is advantageous to the employer, but very detrimental to the employee. Labor becomes nothing more than a cost factor to be cut to the bone. When the worker is not also considered the customer and purchaser of his production, capital need not have the interests of labor as part of its business and marketing strategy.
When capital cuts wages it feels justified in effect saying, "Mr. Worker, we are cutting your wages so we can make a profit, and so our overseas customers can afford to buy your production. You have the privilege of buying inexpensive imported goods at discount stores made by workers we pay much less than we pay you. We make those things abroad especially for you. If you do not accept these benefits, we'd just as soon move this plant to Mexico to take advantage of the more competitive labor to be found there."
Under free trade, international capital interests are free to use the price/wage differentials between countries to short-change labor on behalf of their stockholders and customers. Its very convenient when their customers are neither stockholder nor worker. Protectionism prevents this divide and profit system from depriving labor of its just rewards.
If the prosperity we have know is to be made secure, Americans must produce predominately for the American market and the American consumer. Insofar as possible, American natural resources must be utilized in that production. When natural resources are exported, Americans lose the benefit of the value added through the manufacturing processes. Only when value is added by and for Americans can the American producer/consumer maintain the standard of living necessary to remain a viable consumer. The import invasion of cheap foreign made goods undermines him as both producer and consumer. No matter how cheap goods are, they are only within reach as long as he is able to keep a decent job.
The very term protectionism has been perverted by today's think-tank driven political generation. Repeat a lie often enough, and people will believe it. This is the art and science of propaganda. And it works! Because it has been stated so often by so many experts, it is conventional wisdom that protectionist policies can no longer benefit any nation. History, it is said, proves that protectionism is bad policy. But American history is turned on its ear to accomplish this. The global village promoters equate protectionism with political barbarism.
"If trade-goods do not cross national boundaries," it is said, "then armies will." This is the favorite argument on behalf of free trade. The idea of a nation protecting it's own economic interests has come to be considered selfish and destructive. Nationalism, (another "N" word!) and isolationism, are in the same category. All of this sells very well among an intentionally mis-informed public. Not a single major presidential candidate, other than Pat Buchanan, has the intestinal fortitude to utter the word protectionism without putting a nasty spin on it.
Forget what all the established experts say, and disregard conventional wisdom. Few experts are working for the American people. Their loyalties are with Wall Street and global capital. Protectionism is nothing more than minding the national store and production plant, and protecting the interests of the owners — that's us. Any economically viable nation, such as our own, can be compared to a large owner-operated factory and marketplace in which the owners live, work, and consume. The nation's borders are the outer walls of our factory/store. If this store is not operated for the benefit of the owners, then the benefits of production and sales accrue to those by and for whom it is operated. We the People are the owners of our marketplace. We are both the producers and the consumers. In a political system conductive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and dedicated to the idea of equality under the law for all citizens, the collective citizenry is equally owner-operator, producer-worker, clerk-customer. The producer and the consumer are two sides of the same coin and cannot be separated. It is impossible to short-change one without short-changing the other, and it is impossible to favor the consumer at the expense of the producer. They are actually the same person.
In our collective marketplace, government is the management team we hire to protect our interests while we do the work required to make the marketplace work. Their only legitimate function is to protect the marketplace on our behalf. This includes regulating necessary and desirable commerce with other marketplaces, always with our interests as their foremost duty.
It is irrefutable that during our long period of protectionism, our national store became the greatest success story in the history of nations. Never once in our history was protectionism a cause for foreign war. Remember, the problems of Europe are not to be equated with the problems of the United States. Theirs has been a history of perennial warfare. We declared our independence from Old World squabbles in 1776. If we are now baffled by the seemingly imponderable questions now confronting us in Bosnia, we need only review European history to find what a mess we've got ourselves into. We have willingly inserted ourselves into this perennial state of warfare through entering into entangling alliances our founders so wisely and vehemently warned against. And as long was we remain so entangled, absolutely nothing can keep us from war — but protectionism will have absolutely nothing to do with it. Until we stepped into the never-never-ever-land of foreign entanglements, and perpetual wartime and emergency deficit spending, this nation had magnificent potential.
The hue and cry is always against the evils of nationalism, isolationism, and protectionism. "Trade barriers" and "tariff walls" are evils of all three. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 is often sited as historic proof of the negative effects of protectionism, and a cause of the Great Depression. Beside the fact that the stock market crash of 1929 precipitated the depression, protectionism, per se, simply has no relation to the cause depressions. Withdrawing currency from circulation causes depression. The crash accomplished this with a shocking suddenness in 1929, triggered, (intentionally or not) by Federal Reserve policy. Then Federal Reserve policy facilitated a sustained deflation of the economy until the Second World War. (The depression provided both the cover and impetuous for socialism to make it's long awaited debut in the nation.) This isn't to say that Smoot-Hawley was good legislation. It wasn't. It was a punitive act at a time when the last thing needed was a punitive act. But, in any case, it doesn't prove anything about the effects of protectionism.
Protectionism doesn't have to mean trade barriers and tariff walls. It doesn't have to mean aggressive or punitive measures. But sometimes there are very good reasons for trade barriers — such as in the case of illicit drugs and goods produced by slave, prison, or child labor. Or to protect certain industries that are vital to national security. And what's wrong with maintianing a high national economic standard that will permit labor the dignity of a fair wage and standard of living? But our great and greedy quest for foreign goodies and markets, we're willing to overlook such things. We blithely disarm ourselves, arm potential enemies, and the perpetrators of genocide, and grant "most favored nation" trading status to the world's worst human rights violators.
Tariffs protect domestic labor by equalizing the effect of wage differentials, so imported products enter the domestic market on a par (equal footing) with the same goods produced domestically. This, so that the American production won't be forced to shut down or move to Mexico in order to compete. Tariffs and duties are also a legitimate source of government revenue. Everybody knows that our government is short of revenue. And everybody ought to know that an obscenely huge trade deficit, where imports vastly outnumber exports, contributes very significantly to the national debt.
The Mexican factory is more competitive than an identical American factory, not because it is more efficient, but because the Mexican worker is institutionally short-changed while American labor has traditionally been paid a fair wage.
Free trade holds very little hope for bettering the lot of Third World labor. What it does accomplish is the destruction of local economies and traditional agriculture, and make them dependent on international debt capital. It renders independence and self-sufficiency impossible. And debt is the modern means of instituting slavery.
One significant purpose of free trade, besides the further empowerment of multi-national corporations, is the establishment of international interdependence. The purpose behind the push for international interdependence is said to be to make world peace and cooperation not only possible but inescapable. Once locked into this mode, the rule that "Everybody must cooperate with the global agenda or everybody will suffer the consequences." effectively becomes self-enforcing. Thus, since the enactment of NAFTA, a once great and economically independent nation has become hostage to corrupt Mexican politics and a basket economy on behalf of Wall Street and international banking interests. The multi-billion dollar Mexican bail-out wasn't to help the Mexican workers, (they too were losers) it was for the so-called smart money class (Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, calls them "glass tower people") on both sides of the border — and it has paid them handsome dividends and interest, compliments of the American taxpayer and his children.
Another result of our transition from protectionism to free trade is the accelerated polarization of wealth — the widening gap between rich and poor in developed as well as less developed nations. The poor are getting poorer and more numerous as the rich are getting richer. It is not labor that reaps the benefits when American labor is replaced by either machine or slave labor. There is something woefully wrong when the poor get poorer as they labor to produce more wealth, and only a few are getting much richer. Only under protectionism, where domestic labor produces wealth for itself, can there be an equitable distribution of wealth. In such case, the non-productive segment of the smart money class shrinks, and the whole people gain proportionately.
If international interdependence is good, it means having our hands tied is a virtue, and the prospects of being totally hog-tied is nirvana in the offing. It is the chain that will hold us hostage to an ongoing destructive trade policy. Witness NAFTA, which went from the greatest thing since cheeseburger, to a literal national and international emergency over-night. In the wake of the peso's crash, Mexico's future has been bought and paid for two or three times over by outside interests, including this and the next generation of U.S. taxpayer, who paid, but will never benefit one iota from the debacle. We're told we can't go back to saner times, we're already too interdependent. We must lurch ever-onward toward national suicide.
Never forget that interdependence is dependence. And dependence is the opposite of independence. And that's what our mis-representatives are working for as they go blithely along with the New World Order program. This smacks of the "T" word. Treason.
The public is told that other salvations await in the service economy, the information super-highway, and smart-money. It is a hard fact, however, that there is only so much room in any functional economy for non-producers of real wealth. Computer technology may make producers obsolete, but it can't make consumers obsolete. While a small parasite class is unavoidable, (and maybe even necessary and beneficial) common sense says that everybody cannot become a parasite. The host must remain healthy in order for the parasite to survive and prosper. The host would be consumed, and all die, long before universal parasitism became the slightest possibility. The notion that everybody can become a member of the smart-money class is nothing short of a siren call to the impossible.
Protectionism, though often viewed as unfair intervention on behalf of industry, actually forced large corporations to remain loyal to the nation and their domestic work-force. The number of workers in industry could be reduced due to technological advances, but not due to the fact that labor in other countries was more competitive. Unionism further forced large companies to consider labors' interests. The result was the high standard of industrialization and prosperity our nation achieved, and the high standard of living achieved by the working class. Though this system still had its inherent flaws, by in large it worked to the benefit of everybody — and industrial labor, (with the service industries and civil servants, in tow!) was propelled into a new, ever-expanding affluence. Once, most jobs displaced by automation were replaced by other jobs in new industries, such as those required to develop, manufacture, and market the new automated equipment, and the technological revolution. But no more. As has often been the case in less enlightened times and less enlightened societies, wealth is being diverted from the many to the few, as a new serfdom is being instituted right here in the U.S.A..
It is said we must strive to become ever-more efficient to be more competitive in the global market. This is a dangerous game for labor as well as for the nation. To demonstrate this, one only need carry the efficiency hypothesis to a logical extreme. What would be the ultimate in efficiency? A complex factory operated by a single man in a control room? A ten-thousand acre farm tilled by a single man in a control tower? A fleet of a thousand unmanned super-ships plying world trade routes under the control of a single port captain in the corporate suite? These scenarios, as fantastic as they may seem, are no longer beyond the capabilities of man's ingenuity using current technology. The operator, CEO, and stockholders might be well paid, but... But who will pay the consumer so they can make that possible?
One need only think of the millions of former employees of these industries to realize that this ultimate efficiency dream would be a nightmare.
Class warfare is already a very real specter on the horizon. Unfortunately, class warfare will first manifest itself as race warfare, as the majority (dumbed down by our failed educational system) scape-goat minorities rather than the real culprits and causes of our socio-economic malaise. Unemployment and the loss of hope has already resulted in three major growth industries. The welfare industry, the crime industry, and the prison industry. As time goes on, more and more people will be forced to choose between total dependence on the state and a life of crime.
Logical extremes aren't necessary to demonstrate the folly of our current policy. History and current events will do just fine. Efficiency has been one of the biggest problems of modern capitalism, if the capacity to over-produce is presumed to be a function of efficiency. It has been the bane of the industrialized west, as well as the cause of exploitation of most undeveloped nations. It has been the fuel of colonialism and neo-colonialism, and the father of innumerable wars. "If you don't buy our goods, you'll be seeing our army!" (This is where the idea that protectionism causes war comes from. Protecting our own markets, and producing for them, is a key to peace in a balanced economy. We're trying to force Japan to open its markets to us now — we helped creat an industrial tiger, and it doesn't kowtow on command. It doesn't want our rice or cars, but we frantically insist that it must!) It isn't the protector that causes war, but the aggressor! Aggressive capital in its need to market excess production — to penetrate reluctant markets and force them open — this causes war. Wars have always provided a convenient means by which to destroy excess production and property, force markets, and manufacture the need for more production. Aside from war, too much efficiency has given rise to planned obsolescence and the throwaway economy. This has resulted in an unconscionable waste of natural resources, and been responsible for tremendous environmental degradation. So we want to solve this problem, save the environment, and the peoples of the world, by making every nation an industrial tiger. It seems there is a serious breakdown in reasoning on the part of world planers here. What happens when every nation, and every industry, is efficiently overproducing for the export market, and each insists that everybody else buy their production, or you'll be seeing their army?
Not to worry. That isn't the plan. The plan is for the have-nots of the Third World to advance just enough to become wage-slaves and modest consumers and the haves of the advanced countries to regress to about the same level. And there aren't supposed to be any national armies, only one international army to police the world.
Declining wages and living standards in rich countries will, of course, cause a decline in consumption in those nations. But the giant corporations have their eyes firmly fixed on what they feel are the vast emerging markets of the Third World. The goal is that every penny of commerce, as well as every life-sustaining mouth-full of nourishment, even in the poorest nations, will pass through corporate trade channels. Assisting in the accomplishment of this Utopian Dream, are scores of mis-representatives in Washington. They have taken oaths to represent us, but work instead through the trilateral offices of "3-D government", (based in deceit, deception, and deficits.) "Good intentions" are exceeded only by the twin virtues of ignorance and greed.
What is emerging is a totally new concept in global government. A system few people are prepared to recognize, much less guard against — international corporate fascism. Call it "fascialism," (fascism + socialism). It differs from the National Socialism of nazi Germany in two major ways. (1) It's alleged purpose is world peace and the universal brotherhood of man brought about by international interdependence through free trade. It's true goal, however, is the global hegemony of predatory international capital, freed of any national bias or regulatory control. (2) Under National Socialism, capital was the junior partner of state totalitarianism — the agent of the all-powerful state. But under fascialism the roles are reversed. Nation-states are agent/victims of powerful predatory capital interests. The United Nations serves as a coordinating political body, able (almost) to impose its will upon small recalcitrant nations through economic sanctions or use of military force, (bullying). Globalized capital has already attained de facto political power, our mis-representative having become its representatives. Under this system, the notions of egalitarianism and democracy, key elements of the utopia being promised, become laughable facades.
The plan looks good on its surface to many. But all of the supposed evils international do-gooders associate with the old order they seek to destroy, (i.e., the nation state system, narrow nationalism, virulent patriotism, bigotry, war, espionage, and intrigue, etc.) will pass to the nation-less corporate giants whose motives at best are to serve, not the people, but Mammon. This is the inherent flaw in the nature of international capitalism, and its worst attribute. The on-going specter of corporate giants vying for competitive advantage on the global stage, slaying and devouring one another in the name of the bottom line is ample evidence. The casualty of this globalized corporate warfare is always labor. And labor, which comprises the vast majority of the people, is the salt of the earth — the bedrock upon which all human society depends. The primary role of the state under this new regime will be that of raw police power — and the nurturing of a docile work force. We see ample evidence of the police state emerging now in this country.
This is impending tragedy of truly biblical proportions. Many nations view it as opportunity — those with no other hope. But it is a unequivocal tragedy for the United States, which has known the heights of national success, and has nowhere to go but down.
The dream engendered during the age of European enlightenment was given its first break with the founding of this nation. There will never again be such an historic opportunity. With the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and Bill of Rights, that dream, embodying the universal aspirations of mankind, was transformed into a system of government that truly held the hope for a wonderful new order to emerge. The king's subjects became American Sovereigns, and at last free men were given the fighting chance to achieve according to their own native ability. Here was a nation that, in spite of serious flaws in its social institutions, began on the righteous road toward an attainable national moral high ground. It came close to attaining a footing on the summit, but has since stumbled. All Americans share the blame for this truly catastrophic fall from grace, and we all share the responsibility of getting back on an enlightened track. Though fallen, this is still the greatest nation on earth, with the greatest potential for accomplishing good. The moral high ground is still within reach, but slipping away fast, and we are on a very slippery slope.
To be fair, many proponents of the New World Order sincerely believe in what they are doing. They believe they are leading the world toward ever-lasting peace and prosperity. Little do they suspect they are only adding stones to a top-heavy Tower of Babel which will fall upon all of us before it is completed.
How utterly presumptuous and foolhardy of our mis-representatives to set out reinventing the World Order before getting our own house in order! Like Washington presuming to rule the nation when it has failed so miserably to make its own little District of Columbia into a show-case of beauty and justice. What man in the nation can express pride in the greater metropolitan D.C. area? Reform begins at home. The house we must get into order is our own. The task is both a physical and spiritual one, and it starts with the individual. As for the New World Order — with agents of Mammon in charge as general contractor — it is both literally and figuratively, a Novus Ordo Seclorum sine Annuit Coeptis. (a New Secular Order without the blessing of God).
Camden
U.S. AND NATO TROOPS IN BOSNIA
Though nobody has yet convincingly identified any American national interest in Bosnia, the president has sent American troops in anyway — public opinion and Congress be damned.
If our motives are strictly humanitarian, why weren't our troops deployed to Tibet, Timor, or any number of other places where genocide has occurred or is currently ongoing? Why aren't we in Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, or Nigeria? Clearly, the mission is not strictly humanitarian.
Clinton first suggested the use of U.S. ground troops many months ago under the pretext of extricating a beleaguered UN force. The decision to deploy was probably made months prior to that. Since then, the Clinton administration has been planning or awaiting an excuse. Peace provided that excuse. This raises an interesting question. Was our troop deployment the result of the Dayton Peace Accord, or was the Dayton Peace Accord the result of our determination to deploy American and NATO forces there?
The fact that our troops are going to Bosnia under NATO auspices, to relieve the UN, rather than to join or reinforce them, is significant. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Communist Empire, NATO has been a military alliance in search of a mission — and a reason to not only exist but expand. NATO leaders have found it in Bosnia, on the pretext that the region is important to Western Europe — it being the tinderbox that sparks European wars. It could do so again. Though NATO had been acting as sort of an auxiliary UN force, there has been no suggestion that NATO should become the nucleus of a UN army, though the creation of such a force with real teeth has long been an acknowledged goal of many in the UN community. The UN apparently served well in the Persian Gulf War, why not in Bosnia? This seems rather peculiar. It brings us to other incongruities of the New World Order visa-avis the United Nations, which was originally supposed to have been its implementing vehicle.
The fact is, the UN has become an unwieldy and unreliable tool of global control in the hands of the international power elite. The United Nations was originally conceived to facilitate a New World Order under the perpetual control of the WWII Allies. The Soviet Union, and communism (mellowed into democratic socialism), was central to the goal of world government as envisioned by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and reluctantly supported by Churchill. The post war split between Soviet Russia and other allies, and the ensuing cold war, placed a monkey wrench into the new order planned for the post war world. Contrary to the original plan, Germany had to be resurrected to counter Soviet power. NATO, for Europe, and America's global "containment policy" were the answer to the Soviet threat. Also, the scores of newly independent nations welcomed into the UN radically altered its make-up. Soon the UN no longer effectively represented the interests of western hegemony over global affairs. Though the UN still plays a central role in new world order plans, another force was needed to represent the true power center of the global elite and balance the growing influence of the East and Third World in the UN. NATO will find its expanded role in providing that force. The global power elite will use the UN, and/or NATO, (in conjunction with or independent of the UN) according to changing geopolitical needs. This explains why NATO wasn't disbanded with the apparent demise of its purpose for existing. NATO is a Western Military Alliance, in defense of Western global hegemony — an alliance of the western cultural block, as opposed to the cultural blocks of Asia and the Moslem world. This explains the eagerness of Eastern European, and former communist nations to join a military alliance that no longer has any apparent relevance in the world. Russia is considered a member of the western cultural block, and would already have been welcomed into NATO if it were not for several unresolved conflicts still playing themselves out in the former Soviet Union.
A key requisite for full membership in the community of nations is unequivocal support of the western banking establishment and monetary arrangements. This requires acquiescence to the hegemony of international debt capital and requires the relinquishment of a significant degree of national sovereignty. Some Russian nationalists question the wisdom of giving up national independence now that they have shaken off the shackles of Leninism. Russia may yet choose an independent path.
Bosnia is an opportunity for NATO to define a role for itself in the new global landscape, as the de facto military muscle behind the UN, in support of its original goals. NATO, under American leadership, has what the UN will not be allowed to have — teeth. It is an assertion of continued western military dominance in the world. A lot rides on the success of NATO's Bosnia mission, how ever that mission, or its success, can be defined. For this reason, NATO cannot afford to "cut and run" should the going get tough, as the U.S. did in Beirut, and the UN did in Somalia. It must enforce its will, even if it means a large scale war. This makes the mission in Bosnia more potentially dangerous than most people now imagine. Should the fragile peace break down, and NATO fail to impose some sort of stability, the image of western power would be severely tarnished, and the New World Order, as currently planned, placed in dire jeopardy.
CC
Truth, like God, stands on its own merit.
Those who earnestly seek truth, may find salvation.
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Published in U.S.A. by, William R.
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