Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - 3rd Anniversary of The US Invasion of Iraq: Do We Use US Military to Save the Dollar?

host · 03-16-2006, 10:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

Are you actually suggesting that the US use its military as a bludgeon to provide an unfair advantage on the global marketplace?

While there is certainly precident for this (America using its military to "protect" its interests) the actions and wars are usually couched in terms that make them palatable to the US populace (i.e. Freedom, Spreading Democracy, stopping Communism, etc.).

What seems to be happening here is a little too blatant for the majority to swallow. Has America so weakened itself with its "war on terror" that it has to resort to these sort of actions?

Please correct me if I am misreading Host's intent with this thread.

You're reading "it" right, Charaltan...and I've voted in the poll.
Doesn't it follow, that if I earnestly attempt to keep informed, that I would follow the information that I gather, to conclusions that may contradict personal principles, if reason and common sense require it?

Stick a fork in the dollar...it's done! We should at least talk about what options remain to avoid waking up some morning in the near future to find the purchasing power of the dollar has dropped in half....again....or as Ron Paul put it, "when oil-producing countries demand gold, or its equivalent, for their oil rather than dollars....." (At the end of his speech, linked above..)

Let me make clear that I am approaching this from a practical standpoint. I'm putting aside my moral beliefs in order to initiate discussion about (what I see as...) the greatest and most impending threat to our national security. I have become convinced that the US will do what I am advocating either now or later, because......compared to your country, Canada or, for example, Norway...the threat to the early evaporation of the purchasing power of our U.S. currency is CERTAIN! We have gone past the point of no return. If you conclude that our course cannot be mitigated in time to save the dollar, what remains is only to decide when to act in a way similar to the way all empires have reacted in history. Do we use the military before it is compromised by a lack of purchasing power, and we have the best chance to shore ourselves up....preserve our standard of living and thus, our national security, or do we decline to the point where we use a weakened military that we cannot finance...against... by then....a stronger set of adversaries.

I believe that it will happen anyway...at some point. I think that the way the press responded in 2003 is an indicator that all we lack is honest leadership that can level with us, the way Texas Rep. Ron Paul does....

I laid out the "ground work" for what might comes "next" for the U.S. in this thread last year, where my focus was on a contrasting comparison of how Norway had planned for the end of "cheap oil" vs. the lack of U.S. planning, here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ay#post1797804

The future soundness of the Canadian currency is detailed in my post a few days ago, here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...70&postcount=9

Quote:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0105-08.htm
Published on Monday, January 5, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

How Will Bush Deal With the Deficits? Connecting the Dots to Iraq
by Robert Freeman

How does a nation deal with debts that so greatly outrun its ability to pay? There are basically only five strategies. All are unappealing. Most are calamitous.

The most difficult strategy is, not surprisingly, the honest one: raise taxes and pay your bills. This is what King George III did following the Seven Years War with France in 1763. England had quadrupled its national debt in fighting the War and needed money to pay it off. It turned to the richest people in the realm, the Colonists, and began taxing paper, glass, paint, lead, and, of course, tea. The result, as we know, was the American Revolution......

....Finally, there is plunder. When a nation's debt load becomes so huge it cannot plausibly reassure creditors regarding repayment, it must seek some source of wealth, any source, to keep the borrowed money flowing. This, naked predation, is what kept the Roman Empire alive for the last two hundred years of its existence. It is the strategy adopted by the Spanish Empire-silver and gold from America-and which eventually destroyed the vitality of its own merchant and civil servant classes.

Government economists are not unawares of these imperatives. So, which of the five above strategies has the U.S. adopted to deal with its exploding debt problem?.........

.......So what to do?.........

Consider that the following article was written when the U.S. was $2 trillion less in debt, the results of the invasion and occupation of Iraq weren't known, and the U.S. dollar purchased twice the amount of oil that it can today!

Quote:

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mh...0923&s=greider
The End of Empire

by WILLIAM GREIDER

[from the September 23, 2002 issue]

......For their own reasons, the major trading partners are reluctant to disrupt the status quo. The current arrangement allows them to have it both ways--gaining a greater share of markets under the shadow of US hegemony. Privately, they recognize that the US economic position is steadily ebbing. But it seems wiser to let the Americans keep their delusions for now. The space for self-interested maneuvering is much greater if the United States carries the burdens and costs alone. Despite occasional whining, Japan and Germany are not eager to claim a prominent share in global leadership (both once had a go at running the world and it ended badly). Far better to prop up the United States financially without forcing awareness of the shifting power.

Their reluctance resembles the American attitude early in the last century, when it was the ascendant economic power but did not wish to become a "Great Power" itself, with responsibility for maintaining world order. Instead, the United States propped up Britain for many years as the failing empire sank into unsustainable debt. British power was fundamentally eclipsed in 1914, but the United States provided the financial nurture to keep it upright, as a kind of dummy leader in world affairs, until after World War II. Washington decisively pulled the plug in 1956, when Britain (along with France and Israel) invaded Egypt to capture the nationalized Suez Canal. It was the last gasp of British colonialism, and Washington disapproved. By withholding an IMF loan to London, the United States crashed the pound, forced Britain to withdraw from war and its prime minister to resign in disgrace. The Brits were finally relieved of their delusions.

It is most unlikely, of course, that the US drama will play out in a similar way--we are far too big and powerful by comparison--but Britain's humiliation might serve as a cautionary tale for power-drunk American statesmen. Other nations, when they feel their global market power is sufficiently stronger and we have become still weaker, might organize a transition of gradual adjustments that allows the United States to climb down gracefully from its long-held role. This would be very difficult to accomplish, however, without a real blow to the US standard of living, not to mention national pride.

More likely, the United States and the global system are going to encounter harsh bumps and ugly surprises. Japan, which has the most to lose if the United States taps out as "buyer of last resort," suggested privately a few years back that it would accept a discreet ceiling on its trade surpluses with the United States--a "managed trade" deal the free-market Americans rejected on principle. Richard Medley, a global financial consultant with inside connections in Tokyo, told me afterward, "One of the Japanese strategies is to keep us from doing anything rash for the next decade and a half--until they have become self-sufficient in Asia and can go along without us."

The European Union, meanwhile, is patiently assembling the economic girth and institutional confidence to act as the leading counterpoise to Washington. That is the essential idea of the euro--a competing world currency other nations can use for trade and as a reliable storehold of wealth. As the euro establishes its durability and comes into wider usage, the dollar will no longer be the only option. At that point, it will be easier for Europe or others to exercise their financial leverage against the United States without damaging themselves or the global financial system as a whole. Europe is not quite there yet, but the euro is rising and so is European anger. The Saudis' financial withdrawals this summer may be a hint of what Americans can expect--episodes of veiled pressure until Washington gets the message.

The Bush warriors' reckless American unilateralism can only hasten the day when the creditors' conclude that they must assert their leverage over us, perhaps in order to defend peace and stability in the world. How will Americans react when they discover that "U-S-A" is a lot less muscular than they were led to believe? Assuming Americans do not really yearn to become latter-day Roman legions, many people may be relieved to learn the truth. Stripped of imperial illusions, this country could concentrate on building a different, more promising society at home. But while we can hope that the transition ahead will be gradual and without national humiliation, it's more plausible that America's brave new imperialists will plunge ahead blindly, until one day they encounter their own intense reckoning with the bookkeepers.