MYSTERY BABYLON
RECAPTURING A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
While much of the actual history of America's covert effort to create a world empire - a new "Roman Empire" - remain buried at Suitland, enough of it has surfaced to make plain what the U.S. have been up to over the years. It all revolves around a euphemism known as "Free Trade."
Historically, the U.S. economy has been sufficient unto itself, despite the rhetoric of the "investing class" [i.e., those who derive their incomes from investments as opposed to the those who derive their livelihoods from wages (specifically, the elites)]. While it's true that in recent years this reality has been eroded due primarily to the artifices of the new "global economy" [please see our articles on the economy] and the interest that certain circles in the United States (i.e., the investing class) have for "globalization," it's also true that this new "necessity" for imports is largely an artificial one which has been imposed on the United States largely as a result of the obscene search by American multinational corporations for "cheap labor," (cheap labor maximizes returns on investment) and the globalist dreams of America's new "international yuppie elite" and America's foreign policy establishment than it is the result of real necessity. [Again, please see our article on "The American Empire and the U.S. System of Client States."]
Indeed, in his classic (and iconoclastic) book on free trade, The Myth of Free Trade, Ravi Batra writes:
"... Britain, Germany, Japan, Canada, and Australia, among many others, are clearly open economies (i.e., trade dependent economies) because a large proportion of their economic activity depends on foreign trade ...
"What about the United States? Throughout its history ... America was practically a closed economy (i.e., a self-sufficient economy) ... Postwar data reveal that the United States became a free trade country (only) after 1973 ..."
The fact is, the U.S. reached its highest point insofar as real individual wages are concerned (measured in constant dollars) in 1973 when the U.S. was still a closed, self-sufficient economy.
THE REAL IMPETUS BEHIND FREE TRADE
Why, then, did the United States choose to open its economy? That's another story, a story which - as Dr. Alfred Eckes, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Ohio, points out - had little to do with improving the overall standard of living of its average citizens than it had to do with the geopoitical considerations of its elite foreign policy and economic establishment, specifically, its desire to create a system of economically dependent (i.e., pliant) "satellite nations" to aid it in its war against "World Communism" (i.e., the Soviet Union) and its drive to achieve "world order" - as well as the desire of the industrial elites in this country to find reliable, cheap labor (and in the process, break the back of the American labor movement). Christopher Layne, a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, and Benjamin Schwartz, an analyst in the International Policy Department at the Rand Corporation, explain in an article which appeared in Foreign Policy entitled, "American Hegemony - Without an Enemy:"
"It is commonly held that the Cold War's end allows the United States to conduct a searching reexamination of its role in world politics. In fact, however, that has not happened and there is no reason to believe it will ... The driving force behind America's foreign policy has shown itself to be more basic than the containment of its (old) Cold War adversary (i.e., the Soviet Union) ... At the end of World War II, Washington was committed to an active internationalist agenda and would have pursued it even if the Soviet Union had not emerged as a geopolitical and ideological rival. That essential point was acknowledged in NSC 68, the 1950 National Security Council document that articulated America's Cold War strategy
"... as one designed to foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish.
"The belief that American security is endangered by events in places that most agree have no intrinsic strategic value is a long-standing tenet of U.S. foreign policy ... To those outside the foreign policy elite, the tenor of discussion of the Balkan crisis must seem stilted. After all, visions of falling dominoes, the perception that world politics is a bipolar ideological confrontation between democracy and dictatorship, an obsession with reaffirming U.S. leadership and resolve, and concern for the vitality of alliances such as NATO all seem to belong to another era. To the uninitiated, the Cold War's end renders implausible the entire rationale for continuing American security obligations to Europe and East Asia (principally Japan and Korea).
"To understand why the U.S. foreign policy elite still regards American commitments in Europe and East Asia as vital, one must look beyond the (old) Soviet Union. After World War II Washington sought an international order based upon - to quote NSC 68's primary author, Paul Nitze - "preponderant (American) power." That objective had very little to do with any existing or projected Soviet actions; in fact, American statesmen knew that their wide-ranging objectives would increase Soviet insecurity and thereby the risk of war.
"If fear of Soviet expansion had been the only, or even the most important, reason to bring Western Europe and East Asia under the America security umbrella, why did the United States persist in its strategy long after it was apparent that Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea could provide their own security? And now that the USSR itself has disappeared, why does Washington continue to insist that an American-led NATO and the U.S. defense commitments to East Asia are still indispensable to America's security? The answer is that the basic aspiration of U.S. security policy since the Second World War has not been to contain the Soviets.
"The Cold War provided the impetus (i.e., the excuse) for the strategy of (American) preponderance, which was directed against both the Soviet Union and the Western sphere. By integrating Germany and Japan into a network of U.S.-dominated security and economic arrangements (principally through the device of free trade), Washington achieved two important objectives: Germany and Japan were co-opted into the anti-Soviet coalition, and, just as important, these erstwhile enemies were, themselves, contained. Through this policy of "double containment," the United States assumed responsibility for maintaining peace among the states in those areas ... For Washington, the pacification of Europe and East Asia was the key to creating and sustaining an open global economic system, which was seen as vital to American prosperity - especially elite prosperity, i.e., the prosperity of the so-called "investing class."
"Since the aims of the preponderance strategy transcended the U.S.-Soviet rivalry, it is not surprising that the foreign policy community now seeks to employ the same approach after the Cold War. Indeed, the Soviet Union's disappearance has seemingly removed the last barrier between Washington and the complete attainment of its world order aspirations.
"... As long as the United States can use its superpower capabilities to manipulate, regulate, and calibrate regional politics in Europe and East Asia, it can continue to prevent international politics from relapsing into normal patterns (i.e., national rivalries). Thus, Washington must retain its preeminent role in world politics, as the Pentagon's now infamous draft of the Defense Planning Guidance for the Fiscal Years 1994-1999 argued. That document asserted that to ensure a favorable international environment, America must prevent other states "from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order" [and that we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role (parenthesis in original document - editor)] "Potential competitors" were, of course, widely known to mean Germany and Japan. Those goals mirror the imperatives formulated for America's Cold War national security policy in the late 1940s. As historian Melvyn Leffler has written, those imperatives dictated that "neither an integrated Europe nor a united Germany nor an independent Japan must be permitted to emerge as a third force."
"... the American foreign policy elite's vision of world order springs from the ... outlook ... that America's economic links with Western Europe and East Asia are crucial to ... (world order). (America's) ... empire of free trade ... is imperial in the strategic sense of that term. (It is) a world order policy based on pacification, reassurance, stability, and economic interdependence ... It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the quest for world order will ... inexorably result in a globe-girdling empire."
Thus, the globalization of the world's economy had its genesis not primarily in abstract economic and technological forces, but in distinct policy decisions the United States made as a result of its struggle to establish "world order."
FREE TRADE - A DEVICE DESIGNED TO
UNDERGIRD AMERICAN WORLD-HEGEMONY
While today it is fashionable to hold to the idea that the present global economy emerged in the 1970s and '80s as the result of irresistible technological change and overwhelming economic forces, the fact is the globalization of the world's economy began long before these forces were ever in place; long before the widespread use of the computer, and the possibility of instantaneous electronic fund transfers. To say today, as some do, that the United States needs trade with the rest of the world per se to sustain its level of economic well being simply does not comport with the facts. The fact of the matter is the United States enjoyed its highest standard of living - during the 1950s and early 1960s - at a time when it carried on very little foreign trade vis a vis its overall Gross National Product. Why? - because it possessed in itself all the attributes of great wealth:
An abundance of natural resources.
Powerful and dynamic business combinations.
A well educated and motivated work force.
A well developed physical infrastructure.
A powerful internal market.
No other nation on earth possesses all these advantages in such abundance and balance. Professors George Friedman and Merrideth LeBard write:
"The U.S. ... (is) generally self-contained and able to generate growth without extraordinary dependence on either exports ... or imports ... As (a) continent rather than (a) mere nation, (the United States) ... is not defined (by its) ... basic needs in terms of foreign economic policy (as are countries like Japan and Germany)."
Layne and Schwartz agree:
"It must be remembered that not only does the United States depend far less on foreign trade than its major economic partners, but to a large degree the interconnection (between it and its partners) is volitional (i.e., voluntary)."
For example, the U.S. requirement for imported raw materials is almost negligible: U.S. import requirements for coal/lignite (0.4%), nonmetallic ores (4.5%), iron concentrates (3.4%), farm products (1.3%), chemicals (5.5%), food (2.8%), lumber (1.0%), primary metals (4.2%), scrap metal (0.1%), all others (12.9%) are very limited, especially in comparison to the needs of countries like Japan and Germany. Only in oil, where the United States imports almost 44.6% of its requirements, is the United States truly dependent on the outside world; and even here, it has the military muscle to keep it flowing and/or adequate substitutes - i.e., coal and shale from which to manufacture man-made (ersatz) petroleum products.
FREE TRADE AND "WORLD ORDER"
Free trade, then, has very little to do with raising American living standards - at least the living standards of average, every-day working Americans - and everything to do with the pursuit of American world-hegemony. This is critical in understanding the concept behind free trade: free trade as an idea was birthed in the State Department, not in the Department of Commerce. From the beginning free trade was, and is today, a creature of politics and diplomacy, not commerce and economics. Political and diplomatic forces, not economic and commercial ones, shaped U.S. interests in free trade.
Friedman and LeBard write:
"The free trade regime was not ... primarily (an) economic event, but a political one. It was a means toward a political end: internal harmony in the alliance and the creation of healthy economies and societies within the alliance."
The emphasis on opening up the huge American market to aid foreign allies first surfaced at Bretton Woods and the 1947 Geneva trade negotiations which produced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The thought behind free trade was simple: even if the United States poured massive amounts of money into Europe and Japan to rebuild plants and equipment, as it was beginning to do with the Marshall Plan, the goods produced by these plants could not be sold. There was no market for them; no one in Europe and Japan had the money to buy what was produced. A market, therefore, for the goods and services produced had to be found: and that market was the United States.
The idea of opening up the U.S. market for European and Japanese goods and services was initially pushed by a relatively small State Department group led by Undersecretary of State, Joseph Grew. By the beginning of the Korean War, Dean Acheson and George Kennan had also joined Grew in pushing free trade as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. By the end of the Korean conflict, free trade had emerged as the principle instrument of U.S. foreign policy.
FREE TRADE AS AN INSTRUMENT
OF AMERICAN WORLD-HEGEMONY
Friedman and LeBard continue:
"GATT was the foundation on which the Western political system rested: without GATT the American alliance system would crumble."
Alfred E. Eckes, "Ohio Eminent Research Professor" at the University of Ohio and chairman [1982-1984] of the U.S. International Trade Commission during the first Reagan Administration, agrees. He writes:
"To strengthen free world economies and help contain Soviet expansionism the executive branch (beginning with Harry Truman and extending even to the current administration - both Republicans and Democrats) ... rolled back tariffs and removed trade restrictions ... opening up the giant American market to the world's manufacturers ... (Indeed) the record suggests that for diplomatic and national security reasons the U.S. government sacrificed thousands of domestic jobs to create employment and prosperity elsewhere in the noncommunist world."
Lester Thurrow, Professor of Economics, Dean of MIT's Sloan School of Management and a member of the editorial board of the New York Times, elaborates:
"...the GATT-Bretton Woods system ... was designed to help ... the industrial world rebuild from the destruction of World War II ... If countries could be made rich, they would be democratic. If their richness depended upon selling in the American market, they would be forced to be allies of the United States." [And this last point is critical insofar as biblical prophecy is concerned, for more than anything else it clearly establishes America as "Prophetic Babylon" - Revelation 18: "... the merchants of these things (Japan, the nations of the E.C., Korea, Mexico, etc.), which were made rich by her (i.e., Babylon), shall stand afar off for fear of her torment (verse 15) ... SHE WAS THEIR BIGGEST CUSTOMER (verse 12). SHE MADE THEM ALL RICH FROM (her trade) (verse 19).]
February 6, 1999
Written By S.R. Shearer |
