What's Left
August 6, 2003
A failed system's failed
promises
By Stephen Gowans
http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/failed.html
With communism's demise, and the return
of Eastern Bloc countries to the capitalist fold, the world was promised a new
age of peace and prosperity. The shadow of war would lift. Military
expenditures would be cut back, and troops would be brought home from Cold War
postings. There would be more money for new wars -- on poverty and
homelessness, this time. And capitalism, the single sustainable model of
success (it had, after all, emerged triumphant in a decades long battle with
communism) would deliver the poor from poverty, and bless the world with a
bonanza of consumer goods.
Talk about failed predictions.
In place of peace, we got the lone
remaining superpower waging war to sweep up the few remaining stragglers that
continued to resist integration into the US dominated global economy. Iraq was
conquered, at the expense of over a million lives lost to sanctions and war;
campaigns of intrigue and bombing in the Balkans pushed the region into the US
orbit; and a war on Afghanistan blasted away thousands of peasants but
cemented a US military presence in a Central Asia pregnant with the promise of
oil and gas wealth. Wars on Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya and Cuba are real
possibilities.
Today, America is asserting its
military might over the face of the globe more audaciously than it ever has.
There are 368,000 US troops deployed in nearly 130 countries around the world,
(1) backed by popular support for American military hegemony. Americans think
their military protects their interests abroad and defends host countries from
threats. They rarely pause to wonder whether what's called "their" interests
are really their own personal interests or those of people who live in bigger
houses and get bigger tax breaks and have sizeable investment portfolios. Nor
do they make a habit of wondering how it is that with the US exercising a
virtual military monopoly over the world, host countries could be under a
threat so imminent they would require a US force presence. Exactly which of
the tiny collection of countries not hosting US troops are threatening the
remaining 130?
Could it be that American troops gird
the globe to enforce the access of US firms and investors to the land, labor,
markets and resources of others? Do "our" interests equate to Iraq's oil,
Indochina's tin, Central Asia's natural gas, Kosovo's mines, the Balkan's
pipeline routes, and Indonesia's sweatshops? "A lot of people forget,"
remarked Alexander Haig, former Supreme Commander of NATO and Secretary of
State in the Reagan administration, that the presence of US troops in Europe
is "the bona fide of our economic success...it keeps European markets open to
us. If those troops weren't there, those markets would probably be more
difficult to access." (2) A lot of people forget, because they were told
something quite different: That US troops were stationed in Europe to deter a
Soviet invasion, not to put a gun to the head of Europeans to keep their
markets invitingly open to US firms and investors. The obvious question, With
the threat of a Soviet invasion long passed, why are US troops still there?,
is rarely asked. So it doesn't really matter that we've forgotten.
Washington's latest exercise in imperialism run amok has a similar character.
It was said that Saddam was hiding banned weapons. None can be found. But US
forces intend to stay in Iraq anyway, liberating Iraqi oil for US firms, and
turning the country into a paragon of free markets and free trade open to US
investment.
Which is to say, the emergence of US
capitalism triumphant hasn't given us peace, as promised; it has given us a
bold American military prepared to wage war. And it seems to be waging war to
facilitate American capital settling everywhere, nestling everywhere and
establishing connections everywhere, to paraphrase a shockingly topical
passage from the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, a
document whose irrelevance was said to have been established beyond a shadow
of a doubt when the Berlin Wall came crashing down. Yet, today, it seems to be
more relevant than ever; certainly more relevant than when a competing
ideology forced the stewards of capitalism to tidy up the image of their
vaunted system lest the rabble get it into their heads that they could do
better. It's said in newspapers and TV that the reasons for America's recent
worshipping of Mars have to do with fighting terrorism, but George Bush's
National Security Strategy is long on paeans to free markets and free trade
and capitalism and short on concrete measures to protect the lives of
Americans from suicide bombers.
"Bourgeois society," to use Marx's and
Engels' phrase, hasn't given us prosperity either, unless by "us," you mean
the people who own and control the economy. For the bulk of humanity things
are a lot worst materially than they were when communists, socialists, and
nationalists kept upsetting the capitalist apple cart by nationalizing
resources, bringing vast tracks of national economies under public control,
and putting the public welfare ahead of the profit interests of Wall Street's
boardroom jockeys.
According to the United Nations, 54
countries are poorer today than they were in 1990, about the time communism
was declared failed, and capitalism lionized as the single sustainable model
of success. More children under the age of five are dying in 14 countries, and
enrollment in primary schools is down in 12. Extreme poverty remains the fate
of over one billion people. And in former Soviet republics -- cradle to what
has been dismissed as a failed system -- poverty has tripled. Seventeen
countries in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States have
become poorer since embracing the single sustainable model of success, which
should leave anyone with an ounce of gray matter wondering by what standard
success is measured; surely not by the majority's well-being. (3)
After having been demonized for decades
by a capitalist establishment hell-bent on making communism radioactive (along
with anyone so cavalier about their standing in polite society to utter a kind
word about it) it's sometimes forgotten, if ever apprehended in the first
place, how impressive communism's economic achievements were...and still are,
considering the barren and poisoned ground in which the lone holdouts have
been forced to eke out precarious existences.
Let's start with the most reviled of
the hold-outs: North Korea. Kim Jong Il, the leader, looks like an older
version of Jack Osborne, the spoilt son of the addled and shuffling rock
legend, Ozzie Osborne, which means the country alternates between being seen
as a dangerous and bizarre, nuclear weapons developing state, committed to
sending a nuclear warhead hurtling toward Hawaii (either out of sheer malice
or sheer, inexplicable, stupidity), and a comical land headed by a guy with a
bad haircut and a shapeless suit that barely conceals a middle-aged bulge.
The idea that North Korea is a threat
to the United States is about as believable as the idea that a a colony of
ants is a threat to the elephant whose foot hovers three inches over its hill.
North Korea hasn't a single solider stationed outside its borders. Washington,
on the other hand, has 37,000 troops deployed, on, or near, the North Korean
border, 65,000 troops stationed in nearby Japan, the Seventh Fleet lurking in
nearby waters, and bombers within striking distance. It has dismissed
Pyongyang's pleas to sign a nonaggression treaty, declaring bizarrely that it
will not succumb to blackmail. And what has North Korea done to threaten the
US (or to blackmail the country)? It has fired up a mothballed nuclear reactor
capable of producing weapons grade material, and withdrawn from the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), but only after Washington reneged on an
agreement to build light water reactors and provide fuel oil shipments.
And only after Washington issued a virtual declaration of war, designating
North Korea part of "an axis of evil."
Could a North Korea with one or two
crude nuclear bombs pose much of a threat to a US poised to strike with
overwhelming force? Quite the other way around. Indeed, North Korea's pursuit
of nuclear weapons can be said to be a rational response to an overwhelming
threat by the US. And there have been plenty of signs that the threat is real.
"This is just the beginning," an
administration official told the New York Times, after US and British troops
marched on Baghdad. "I would not rule out the same sequence of events for Iran
and North Korea as for Iraq." (4) The Pak Tribune cited CIA sources that
revealed a "list of countries where replacement of government has been
declared essential." (5) The list included North Korea. U.S. undersecretary of
state for arms control and international security, John Bolton, warned
Pyongyang to "draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq." (6) It has. "The DPRK
(North Korea) would have already met the same miserable fate as Iraq's had it
compromised its revolutionary principle and accepted the demand raised by the
imperialists and its followers for 'nuclear inspection' and disarmament,"
declared the official daily of the ruling Korean Workers Party, Rodong Sinmun.
(7) Later, the government issued this statement: "The Iraqi war teaches a
lesson that in order to prevent a war and defend the security of a country and
the sovereignty of a nation it is necessary to have a powerful physical
deterrent." (8)
Not to be so readily deterred,
Washington has a plan, (dubbed Plan 5030.) According to US News and World
Report,
"One scenario in the draft
involves flying RC-135 surveillance flights even closer to North Korean
airspace, forcing Pyongyang to scramble aircraft and burn scarce jet fuel.
Another option: U.S. commanders might stage a weeks-long surprise military
exercise, designed to force North Koreans to head for bunkers and deplete
valuable stores of food, water, and other resources. The current draft of
5030 also calls for the Pentagon to pursue a range of tactical operations
that are not traditionally included in war plans, such as disrupting
financial networks and sowing disinformation." (9)
Washington ultra-hawk, Paul
Wolfowitz, warned, "North Korea is headed down a blind alley. Its pursuit of
nuclear weapons will not protect it from the real threat to its security,
which is the (internal) implosion brought about by the total failure of its
system. Indeed the diversion of scarce resources to nuclear weapons and other
military programs can only exacerbate the weakness of the (government)." (10)
So what's the choice? Head down a blind alley, ushered along by the US, or
turn over the country to Washington, and the multinational corporations it
represents? Who's the blackmailer?
History, a series of natural
calamities, and unrelenting US hostility, have not been kind to the tiny
country. The mountainous north was once the center of the peninsula's
heavy industry, the south its breadbasket. The Korean War, which saw US
bombers destroy every building in the north over one story, changed that. The
north was reduced to rubble. But it rebuilt, and until the 1980s, outpaced the
south economically. By 1961, it was self-sufficient in agriculture. North
Korean children were better vaccinated than their counterparts in the US,
according to the World Health Organization and United Nations, who commended
the country for its delivery of health care. And life expectancy was higher
than in the capitalist south. (11)
Then disaster struck. The socialist
trading bloc collapsed, depriving Pyongyang of its major trading partners. Oil
subsidies from Russia ended. And if that weren't enough, floods and droughts
ravaged crops. Famine followed. But, for a time, the country had enjoyed
impressive material gains, an affirmation of what can be achieved outside the
capitalist demarche, even where resources are diverted to defense against an
unrelenting foe than remains poised on your borders to strike. Imagine
what the country could have achieved without the US breathing fire down its
neck.
Cuba, in many respects, fits the same
mold: Astonishing social and economic gains under a communist government, the
implacable and unrelenting hostility of the US, and some backsliding after the
collapse of its major trading partners. (The US has maintained an economic
blockade for over 40 years.) Still, despite these challenges, Cuba is a much
kinder and egalitarian place today than it was before the revolution, under
the rule of the US-backed Batista regime, when the country's economy was an
appendage of that of the US. The US fears Cuba, journalist Seamus Milne
observes, not because it is a threat to the safety of Americans, but because
it's an example of what can be accomplished outside the US dominated
capitalist model. (12 )
In 1953, the illiteracy rate in Cuba
exceeded 22 percent. Today it is under one percent. Three percent of those
over the age of 10 had a secondary school education. Today, almost 60 percent
do. Back then, at the height of the sugar harvest, when unemployment was
lowest, eight percent were jobless. Today, the unemployment rate is three
percent, making Cuba one of the few countries in the world to boast full
employment.
Well over 80 percent own their own
homes, and pay no taxes. The remainder pay a nominal rent.
No other country has as many teachers
per capita. Education is free through university. (The country also provides
free university educations to 1,000 Third World students every year.) And
classroom sizes put those of Western industrialized countries to shame.
Health care is free. And while the US
has deployed over 300,000 troops in almost 130 countries to keep markets open
to US investment, Cuba has sent 50,000 doctors to work for free in 93 Third
World countries to heal the sick. (13)
Infant mortality is lower than in any
other Third World country and even some Western capitalist countries (it's
higher in Washington, DC.) Life expectancy is 76 years, and is expected to
rise to 80 years within the next five years. (14) By comparison, the return of
capitalism has pushed life expectancy down in former communist countries.
These gains, seldom mentioned in the
US, place the country head and shoulders above other Latin American countries
firmly ensconced in the American orbit, for which Washington's single
sustainable model of success continues to deliver grinding poverty, misery,
and gross inequality, but handsome profits for US corporations.
There are elections, and, contrary to
Washington's anti-Cuba propaganda, Cubans do vote. But they don't choose among
two largely identical parties, as in the US, where the parties, and their
candidates, are almost invariably in thrall to, or are representatives of, the
countries' corporate elite. As for human rights, Cuba stands as a model of
what can be achieved by way of economic and social rights, the basic rights to
food, housing, clothing, health care, education and jobs, enshrined in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but not recognized as human rights in
the US. (15) Washington, on the other hand, has made a fetish of civil and
political liberties, which, in the case of its relations with Cuba, has
everything to do with giving its agents in the country, mistakenly called
"independent" journalists and "independent" librarians (they're not
independent of Washington, which bankrolls their activities), room to maneuver
to organize further destabilization, with the object of overthrowing the
revolution and banishing economic and social rights in favor of investors'
rights. That Cuba, a poor country, has been able to guarantee the right to
food, clothing, shelter, health care, education and jobs, despite trying
economic circumstances and US hostility, can be seen as extraordinary, or
simply what can be readily accomplished outside the strictures of capitalism.
If a poor Third World country, harassed by a powerful neighbor, can deliver
high quality health care and education for free, why can't the world's richest
country do the same? The answer: Capitalism drives towards better profits, not
better lives.
Ever since the US-dominated global
economy has, with the collapse of Eastern Bloc communism over 10 years ago,
more boldly sought purchase everywhere, US military imperialism has run amok,
wars of aggression have been started, and poor, and formerly communist,
countries have become poorer. The leaders of the Western world declare
capitalism to be the single sustainable model of success, but countries that
rejected capitalism, and committed to egalitarianism, have done better in
terms of guaranteeing economic and social rights than comparison countries,
despite difficult circumstances, and those that have rejected egalitarianism
in favor of a return to capitalism have regressed. What's more, those who said
countries should integrate into the US dominated global economy either have
much to gain personally from other countries surrendering their economies, or
represent their own country's corporate class; it's a fraud based in the
self-interest of a narrow band of wealthy people in the world's richest
countries. That it is a fraud is richly evident in the failed promises and
dismal record of the last decade.
1. "Where are the Legions? Global
Deployments of US Forces," GlobalSecurity.Org,
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/global-deployments.htm)
2. UPI, January 7, 2002.
3. "UN report says one billion
suffer extreme poverty," World Socialist Web Site, July 28, 2003.
4. "Pre-emption: Idea With a Lineage
Whose Time Has Come," The New York Times, March 23, 2003.
5. "Iran to be US next target: CIA
report," Pak Tribune (Online) March 24, 2003.
6. "U.S. Tells Iran, Syria, N. Korea
'Learn from Iraq," Reuters, April 9, 2003.
7. "North Korea vows to make no
concessions," Agence France-Presse, March 29, 2003.
8. "Administration Divided Over North
Korea," The New York Times, April 21, 2003.
9. "Pentagon Plan 5030, a new blueprint
for facing down North Korea," US News and World Report, July 21, 2003.
10. "Wolfowitz Visits US Military Base
In Korean Buffer Zone," AFP, June 1, 2003.
11. "Peace, the real resolution to
famine in North Korea, ZNet, July 23, 2003.
12. "Why the US fears Cuba," The
Guardian, July 31, 2003.
13. Ibid.
14. Speech by Fidel Castro on the 50th
anniversary of the attack on the Moncada barracks, July 26, 2003.
15. Karen LeeWald, "Democracy,
Cuba-Style," Canadian Dimension, July/August, 2003.
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What's
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