I am familiar with the split in the US ruling class that was at one time described as between the cowboys' & yankees'. Loosely as I recall it, 'cowboys' were oil, arms and aerospace industry money - while 'yankees' were the older established capitalists. (i) Was that true in the views of the list-members? Was there a real division of interest? (ii) Is this Petras claim below, plausible? Is it linked to the older split?
Many thanks for your views. Apologies of the snippet below & link has been posted already - I just saw it. Hari Kumar ________________ See Petras J: ______________ Texas Versus Tel Aviv: US Policy in the Middle East By James Petras Oct 31, 2006, 11:29 http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_23352.shtml The struggle within the US power structure between the economic empire builders (EEB) and the civilian militarists/Zioncons over US Middle East and global policy is now out in the open and intensifying. The EEB now have a politically powerful organizational expression, the Baker Commission (known officially as the Iraq Study Group) led by the formidable former Secretary of State, James Baker. The EEB are backed by a group of bipartisan congressional leaders, sectors of the traditional military elite, a powerful coalition of Texas-based oil and gas groups and sectors of Wall Street financial houses and potentially a large majority of public opinion. Against them are the civilian militarists in the Pentagon, State Department and White House (Rumsfelt, Chaney, Rice, Bolton and Bush), a declining majority of Congressional Democrats and Republicans, the Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations headed by the America-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and their influential apparatchiks in the mass media and their numerous `grass roots' political fronts (political action committees). What is at stake is of fundamental importance to the future of US politics; not only in the Middle East, which is the immediate catalyst for the drawing up of sides, but the entire way in which US policy is formulated and equally important how the US will engage in defending and expanding its global empire." _______ETC_____________________________ Crises and Opportunities: The Basis of Confrontation Several factors have converged to precipitate this intra-elite confrontation. First and foremost is the prolonged, costly and un- winnable war in Iraq. The Zioncon-civilian-militarist (ZCCM) policy of colonial invasions and military occupation in pursuit of destroying Israel's adversaries and enhancing its dominance of the Middle East has weakened the US efforts to sustain its global dominance. The vast absorption of military resources, troops, reserves and logistical support systems in pursuit of a prolonged guerrilla war without end, has severely weakened Washington's capacity to apply military force to intimidate and enforce or intervene in other strategic regions or countries of conflict. The military losses in Iraq have undermined domestic public support for present and future overseas military interventions in support of empire building. The sustained military and political resistance to the vast US military occupation army has lowered the intimidation factor so necessary in sustaining imperial diplomacy. In a word, the Iraq war has become a major impediment to empire building, its defense and its domestic economic and political support, a principal motivating factor in the crystallization of the Baker Commission. Secondly the ZCCM policy of promoting Israel's Middle East supremacy is enormously damaging to some of the biggest petroleum and financial institutions in the US. At a time when the headlines of the major financial press read "seas of cash flooding into the Gulf brings an explosion of investment companies", "Dubai plans fund to tap Gulf liquidity" and "Global insurers see rich seam to be mined in Saudi Arabia",(Financial Times Oct 19, 2006 p.4), the White House and Pentagon plot new highly destabilizing military confrontations with Syria and Iran, potentially wrecking hundreds of billions of dollars in lucrative investments, contracts and returns. The entire Zioncon political apparatus is the only major force in the US consistently pushing for Congressional and Executive military action jeopardizing the potential profits of major US petroleum, investment banking, insurance and other key sectors of the US global economic elite. The paradox is that many of the same wealthy investment bankers eager to tap into the Middle East bonanza are the same groups, which finance the AIPAC-Zioncon warmongers. This raises concerns of cross pressures, double allegiances, tribal loyalties and dollar signs! >From the perspective of defending US global interests, being tied down militarily in Iraq in a long-term, large-scale engagement is not only counterproductive but has created a political crisis. The domestic consensus among the political elite concerning the compatibility of imperialism and democracy is threatened with being torn asunder to sustain the war. The ZCCM power bloc increasingly resorts to authoritarian war powers totally at variance with the existing constitutional order peeling layers of legitimacy from the existing political system. The Baker Commission is attempting to reassert the supremacy of the market over the military in defining the driving forces of empire building, that is, the economic interests of US petrol and finance capital over Israeli military dominance in shaping US Middle East interests. For economic determinists, for whom foreign policy is simply the unmediated result of powerful economic interests, the failure of the US government to scuttle a mendicant, miniscule militarist state forever milking the US Treasury in favor of the most powerful US energy companies pursuing multi-billion dollar deals with resource- rich free-market Arab-Muslim countries is an inexplicable mystery. Inexplicable because these `economic determinists' are either willfully blind or they deliberately choose to ignore the political power of the ZCCM power configuration in overriding US global economic interests. To continue with the current state of affairs is to deepen the political crisis of empire both domestically and internationally and to lose out on the greatest economic opportunities in the global economy..." Hari Kuamr
