GOLD AND PAX AMERICANA
Nelson Hultberg
"Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad," goes the ancient saying. If this is true, then our leaders in Washington are headed straight for the cuckoo's nest. There is a virulent, hubristic madness consuming our political elites in this first decade of the 21st century. It manifests in the intrusiveness of the Nanny State, in the relentless debasement of our currency, in the manipulation of our markets, and in the outrageous taxes that sap the entrepreneurial vigor from our lives. But scariest of all, it manifests in the employment of unbridled power to remake the world's divergent cultures, religions, and systems into American democracy clones.
Power, our Federal Government has -- political, bureaucratic, police, military, monetary, and taxing power. It has had such power in excessive amounts for over a century now, and it has grown quite ruthless in wielding it in order to pursue its goals. Its primary goal is HEGEMONY over other regions and countries, as well as over American citizens themselves. This should not be surprising. This is what tyrannical governments have been doing for thousands of years. Since the days of the ancient Pharaohs, they have sought to control their neighbors as well as their own citizens, and they have justified their behavior by insisting that "peace and stability" were their aims. But power is their real aim. And sadly, individuals become ciphers in the process. This is what is unfolding once again, as it has countless times in the past. Study the annals of man from the Sumerian kings, to Alexander the Great, to Frederick Barbarossa, to Napoleon, Stalin and the modern despots, and the major leitmotif of the entire panorama is PURSUIT OF POWER by governments over individual citizens.
Beginning of the Madness
With the onset of the War on Terrorism, our Federal Government has now ratcheted up its drive for hegemony both domestically and worldwide. In September 2002, the Bush administration released its new National Security Strategy, which was a sweeping agenda to mount a retaliation against the terrorist threat from Islam. But it was also something else; it was the first implementation step for the vision of Pax Americana. This vision has its origin in the controversial 1992 Pentagon report by former under secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz titled, "Defense Planning Guidance." In it, he called on America in the post Cold War era to alter its foreign policy aims from merely defense of our nation to actively pursue a reshaping of the world -- in short, get involved in nation building whenever and wherever it would appear to benefit us. Now that we are the only superpower in the world, we must seize the opportunity to bend as many nations as possible to our will, to our values, to our form of democracy. Only in this way, can we truly promote "peace and stability" for ourselves and our allies. Only in this way can America heed the call to national greatness that falls on the shoulders of singular superpowers.
The Wolfowitz doctrine has been refined and sophisticated during the past ten years by high level pundits of Washington such as Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The refined version now has numerous aggressive foreign policy goals for America to pursue. Reduced to its fundamentals, this doctrine is meant to make America into an imperialistic power and to be proud of it. It is defined by Kristol and Kagan as "benevolent global hegemony." One of the most important of the PNAC goals is the imposition of democracy upon as many nations as possible -- especially nations of the Middle East -- through both stick and carrot methodologies. If a nation can be bribed into democracy, all well and good; but if it can't be bribed, then it is to be bludgeoned. Democracy has become our new god, the raison d'etre, the salvation of our lives. It is now the curative for all the world's ills from war, to poverty, to cultural primitiveness. Spread its healing principles to mankind, and we can build a heaven on earth. Such is the madness that now consumes our Federal Government.
"Washington today is trying to turn everyone into Americans," writes Richard Maybury in his July issue of Early Warning Report. "No one makes any secret of the fact that Washington sees Iraq as a test case for [its imposition of democracy] plan. George Bush boasted about it in his February 26th speech. He intends to spread the American Way throughout Arab lands, to 'transform that vital region.'" [www.chaostan.com ]
Because the heathens lack democracy, they are prone to breed extremism and hatred, they war on their neighbors, and most importantly they wish to blow up people and buildings in America. According to the Kristol-Wolfowitz PNAC model, terrorism has its roots in the non-democratic political ideologies of the Third World, especially in the theocracies of the Middle East. Thus, the first order of the new Pax Americana is to bring those we deem as heathens to democracy, to modernize the poor devils, and while we're at it teach them the beauties of a more materialistic culture. Since democracy is the summum bonum of our day, we have the duty to impose it upon those who are backward. The fact that the British felt the same call to duty in their imperialistic dreams of the 19th century goes ominously unnoticed by our punditry. What is the difference between the Kristol-Wolfowitz vision and the expansionist policies of Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria in England of the 1870's that promoted war against the Afghans and the Zulus? British style colonization may not be the goal of the PNAC vision, but the curse of world hegemony is, just as it was in the days of Pax Britainia.
History does not repeat precisely, but it does in general principle. And Washington is repeating the sins of the past while our pundits pusillanimously blank out. Our Federal Government has divorced itself from the true meaning and purpose of America in both its domestic and its foreign policies. It is to be feared as a despoiler among nations and men. It has crossed the Rubicon into imperial overreach.
In an article in January of this year, I wrote that I saw the coming Iraqi war, whether it was to unfold horrifically or painlessly, as just the beginning of a whole series of Islamic-Washington clashes over the next 10 to 20 years. I stated that genuinely healthy economies are not spawned from protracted periods of war. And that this is what lies on America's horizon for a long time to come. So better load up on gold and silver in whatever manner your risk tolerance allows. And spread the word about the hubris that is causing it all. That is what sane men do in times of upheaval. If the world wants to go insane, it has that prerogative. But the wiser heads of history always refuse to take part, and they always look to protect themselves from the insanity.
I see no reason to change that view. In fact, the events unfolding since then have only reinforced my conviction that there is so much ignorance and arrogance ruling Washington today that only a catastrophic denouement that extends for years can rouse the intelligentsia from their madness. Only through a cathartic crash of historic proportion can the necessary changes be brought about in our national perspective to restore freedom, sound money, and proper foreign policy.
The Costs of Empire
Trade and fiscal deficits are now exploding like Krakatoa and St Helens to pay for the delusions of our leaders. Years of prodigality that would make Louis XIV blush have gutted our national savings and sanity. Washington's welfare bureaucracy is today's Versailles Palace. Gold leases, swaps, deceit, and MANIPULATION are now the tools of Greenspan's Fed -- so terrified are his governors of the unmitigated horror awaiting the nation because of their 90-year experiment in dollar alchemy. Greenspan has become nothing but a gussied up Keynesian medicine man -- mixing interest rate tonics, Forex cathartics, bond purchase elixirs, and snake oil monetization into a putrid witch's brew to try and cast just the right spell over the economy to somehow turn fractional reserve dross into gold. But the laws of nature are not to be conned. The Fed's credit money is still debt, and it will not move an economy already suffocating in debt. Sir Alan sold out his youthful principles to ride around in the black limousines, and now he has only a shaman's bogus remedies with which to try and salvage his place in the history books. He gave up, with the sale of his principles, the only instrument that could save the nation -- gold. His recondite speeches, so popular among the sycophants of Washington during the go-go nineties, are now seen for what they always were -- self-serving gobbledygook and mystification to further perpetrate the power of the Federal Government in our economic lives.
The Federal Government's fiscal deficit will come in somewhere between $300 and $400 billion this year, while the trade deficit will exceed $500 billion. According to Bill Bonner, the estimates on what the Iraqi regime change will ultimately cost range anywhere from $27 billion to $1.92 trillion. With the Federal Government's track record for "honest statistical evaluation," what are the chances that its final bill is closer to the $1.92 trillion figure than the $27 billion figure? Pretty damn good, I would say. Does anyone with a semblence of a brain still think such gross fiscal insanity can be rectified with "monetary policy," that such debt will not have to be purged through an excruciating economic collapse? Sadly yes, there are those that do. They ride around Washington in black limousines and pour forth, to media lackeys and talk show barkers, the most disingenuous fallacies of our age.
To compound the problem of trade and fiscal deficits that Demopublican statism has brought us via its 30 year orgy of buying votes with paper dollars, we now add the cost of empire. Heathens are not converted cheaply. Our Iraqi venture is beginning to settle into the morass of guerrilla resistance a little more each week. And guerrilla resistance, as the Russians found out in Afghanistan, can go on indefinitely. Its like the irrationality of the stock market; it can stay predominate far longer than a nation's treasury can stay solvent. What glee our enemies must be experiencing at sight of obtuse Americans trying to fathom why the Shiites do not care to adopt our democracy and our Constitution. As Maybury points out, they have their own Constitution. It's the Koran, and it has ruled them for over a thousand years. Yet Kristol-Wolfowitz, et al imagine that they can overturn 1400 years of metaphysical tradition with gung-ho American lectures. I have a bit of bad news for Kristol-Wolfowitz, et al. Change in a culture's metaphysical views takes place over centuries, not months and years. It moves like a glacier sliding across a continent. And it does not respond to the butt end of a rifle. Yet the madness has already been launched and cannot be retracted now. So America will have to play this game out. It will be, in my opinion, a game that will cost us hundreds of billions of dollars and many lives lost literally on the battlefield of the Mideast cauldron, as well as untold lives lost morale-wise on the home front as our economy slouches toward bankruptcy and an Argentine future because of our government's ever-extending reach beyond its financial and spiritual supply lines. |
