So far as economic punishment is concerned, what would happen if the Germans turned all their dollars into Euros?
Joanna
At 11:47 AM 02/16/2003 +0000, you wrote:
A new step in the escalating inter-imperialist conflict:America is to punish Germany for leading international opposition to a war against Iraq. The US will withdraw all its troops and bases from there and end military and industrial co-operation between the two countries - moves that could cost the Germans billions of euros.
The plan - discussed by Pentagon officials and military chiefs last week on the orders of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - is designed 'to harm' the German economy to make an example of the country for what US hawks see as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's 'treachery'.
The hawks believe that making an example of Germany will force other countries heavily dependent on US trade to think twice about standing up to America in future.
This follows weeks of increasingly angry exchanges between Rumsfeld and Germany, in which at one point he taunted Germany and France for being an irrelevant part of 'old Europe'.
Now Rumsfeld has decided to go further by unilaterally imposing the Pentagon's sanctions on a country already in the throes of economic problems.
'We are doing this for one reason only: to harm the German economy,' one source told The Observer last week.
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,896573,00.html
This is turning into a struggle for world leadership, dangerous for the USA if it is not sure of its own economic future.
Chris Burford
London
