Madeleine Albright, then UN Ambassador, informed the UN Security
Council during a 1994 discussion about Iraq: "We recognize this area
as vital to US national interests and we will behave, with others,
multilaterally when we can and unilaterally when we must."
(Middle East International (London), Oct. 21, 1994, p. 4)
Another interesting quote from Madeleine Albright.
It is "not a good idea" to link human rights and trade issues.
(Washington Post, March 1, 1999, p. 13)
The US national interest is to control everything. The US government has a name for this policy. It is called Broad Spectrum Dominance. This dominance is desired on all levels.
The American economy is supposed to be the world's strongest economy, but it is not. It is the weakest economy in the Western world. All it has going for it is that it has achieved Broad Spectrum Dominance over most other economies.
In 2006 (the latest annual data), the US had a trade deficit totaling $838,271,000,000. The US trade deficit with Europe was $142,538,000,000. With Canada the deficit was $75,085,000,000. With Latin America it was $112,579,000,000 (of which $67,303,000,000 was with Mexico). The deficit with Asia and Pacific was $409,765,000,000 (of which $233,087,000,000 was with China and $90,966,000,000 was with Japan). With the Middle East the deficit was $36,112,000,000, and with Africa the US trade deficit was $62,192,000,000.
(http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2401.shtml)
These figures can be verified through the Bureau of Economic Analysis: U.S. International Transactions Accounts Data http://www.bea.gov/international/
America is a dot.com Economy. The aim of the dot.com economy is to transfer as much money as possible from someone else’s pocket into your own. This is how a dot.com economy works. You buy an item for two dollars and sell it for one dollar. The first week you sell five items, the second week ten, the third week twenty and the forth week forty. By the end of the first four weeks you have taken seventy five dollars.
You then pay your creditors on thirty days the first week's payment is due which is ten dollars for the first 5 items. You now have sixty five dollars in the bank.
The next week you sell eighty items and now have one hundred and forty five dollars in the bank, and the second week's payment is due which is ten items x two dollars, so you owe twenty dollars leaving you with one hundred and twenty dollars.
Provided you can keep expanding your sales and stay thirty days ahead of your creditors everything if fine. But expansion does not last forever, so a large salary is paid into your private account, and when the crunch comes you walk away.
The sub-prime market was dot.com in structure and when the expansion stopped, the creditors caught up and America is now dead, and the rest of the world does not get their money. But the principles of the schemes get to keep the salaries they have been paid.
Unfortunately the policy of Broad Spectrum Dominance does not allow the world from disengaging from America. This entanglement came about because of the 'White Plan' implemented in 1944.
How would the world economy operate after the World War? The old economic regime was gone and there was a need to replace it. Harry Dexter White (1892-1948) was the author of a plan that made the United States dollar and its relation to gold the centre of the international monetary system.
This led to the formation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These two organizations (along with the World Trade Organization) control the world economy and are themselves controlled by America. (Link to my previous article). In relation to the world economy BDS (Broad Spectrum Dominance) by the US government has been achieved.
BDS has been extensively practiced by the US government militarily, with varying degrees of success. The US government has included in the policy of BSD the removal of governments (to be replaced by governments of US Choice) and the invasion of sovereign states.
The first visible successful implementation of BSD in this area occurred in the reign of Dwight D Eisenhower when he used the CIA to invade Guatemala on behalf of the United Fruit Company (UFCO). UFCO operated extensive banana plantation on Guatemala. Basically the whole of Guatemala ran on bananas and gave rise the expression 'Banana Republic.'
Juan Jose Arevalo was elected President of Guatemala in 1945, and initiated social reforms that where continued his successor Jacobo Arbenz.
The problem for UFCO was that the Guatemalan government wanted to build infrastructure like roads, schools and hospitals, and expected the UFCO to pay taxes. Also the government allowed the formation of trade unions and other workers groups. There was also the fear that large areas of unused land, controlled, but not owned, by UFCO might be taken from them.
In 1954 the CIA invaded Guatemala with 150 rebels under the command of Castillo Armas. By Jamming Guatemala's radio stations, broadcasting false information and using US bombers piloted by CIA pilots the CIA convinced the Guatemalan public and President Arbenz that it was a major invasion, and that Guatemala had been defeated.
Arbbenz was replaced by Armas as president. Gen. Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes took power in 1958 when Armas was murdered. Thus began a series of repressive dictatorships in Guatemala, but they have always behaved in a manner pleasing to the US Government, even if the people of Guatemala now live in poverty and constant fear.
Later the CIA tried to use the same tactics against Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs, but were defeated.
Guatemala represents the only real military success of BSD. America has tried many times to reproduce the success of Guatemala but has always failed. No failure was as spectacular as Vietnam.
At the Geneva conference of 1954 (called to find a solution to the Indochina war) America continually pushed for a Military solution. America wanted a combined force of French, American and British forces to achieve military superiority before negotiating with the Communist forces. After nine years of war France wanted an honorable way out. The British wanted a solution and an end to fighting but were not going to get involved with military action. An early French proposal for partition and elections was rejected by the Americans because it was clear that in a free election the communists would win.
This is a very brief overview of very complex negotiations. For a full commentary on the background of the war and the proceedings at the Geneva Convention see The Pentagon Paper.
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Communists) came up with a proposal for partition and America and Britain countered with a Seven Point plan.
(1) Preservation of the integrity and independence of Laos and Cambodia, and assurance of Viet Minh withdrawal from those countries
(2) Preservation of at least the southern half of Vietnam, and if possible an enclave in the Delta, with the line of demarcation no further south than one running generally west from Dong Hoi
(3) No restrictions on Laos, Cambodia, or retained Vietnam "materially impairing their capacity to maintain stable non-Communist regimes; and especially restrictions impairing their right to maintain adequate forces for internal security, to import arms and to employ foreign advisers"
(4) No "political provisions which would risk loss of the retained area to Communist control"
(5) No provision that would "exclude the possibility of the ultimate reunification of Vietnam by peaceful means"
(6) Provision for "the peaceful and humane transfer, under international supervision, of those people desiring to be moved from one zone to another of Vietnam"
(7) Provision for "effective machinery for international supervision of the agreement."
France saw a conflict between points 4 and 5. The conflict was that this could mean an election. The American answer was that there was a possibility of and election, but the agreement would give the South breathing space to prepare. The 7 point plan formed the basis of the partition of Vietnam.
It seems that North Vietnam stuck to the agreement in the expectation that when a free election was eventually held they would win, and Vietnam would be united under communist rule.
The French went home, the British never came, and America was left in the position of propping up an unpopular and ineffective South Vietnamese government that had no hope of winning a free election. The American Army became 'foreign advisors.' The irony is that the Americans had no need to be involved in the first place. They could have just left France to negotiate what they had originally wanted, an 'honorable' withdrawal.
Instead they tried force the French and British governments into a military coalition to fight communism in Vietnam when the people of Vietnam wanted the communist government.
The Americans had the option of helping South Vietnam build a viable and democratic government that would be able to win a future vote. It would have been hard work but it could have been done.
In the best Traditions of BSD instead America decided to send in the CIA to carry out covert operations against the North, with the intent of destabilizing the communist government and causing its collapse. The rest is history.
The US government was defeated in Indochina, but only bruised at home. No outside power will compel us to face the record honestly or to offer reparations. On the contrary, efforts will be devoted to obscuring the history of the war and the domestic resistance to it. There are some simple facts that we should try to save as the custodians of history set to work.
In its essence, the Indochina war was a war waged by the US and such local forces as it could organize against the rural population of South Vietnam. Regarding the Geneva Accords of 1954 as a "disaster," Washington at once undertook a program of subversion throughout the region to undermine the political arrangements. A murderous repression in South Vietnam led to the renewal of resistance. Kennedy involved US forces in counterinsurgency, bombing, and "population control." By 1964 it was obvious that there was no political base for US intervention. In January 1965, General Khanh was moving toward an alliance with anti-American Buddhists and had entered into negotiations with the NLF. He was removed as the systematic bombardment of South Vietnam began, at triple the level of the more publicized bombing of the North. The full-scale US invasion followed, with consequences that are well known. The civilian societies of Laos and then Cambodia were savagely attacked in a war that was at first "secret" thanks to the self-censorship of the press.
Noam Chomsky The Meaning of Vietnam.
All over the world America has attempted military BSD. It hasn't worked. It hasn't worked in Burma, Indonesia, Cambodia, East Timor, Laos, Guatemala and many other countries around the world owe the beginnings of their problems to successive American government's addiction to BSD. Two major problems, Iraq and Iran, are solely the result of BSD policies.
President Eisenhower had great confidence in the efficacy of covert operations as a viable supplement or alternative to normal foreign policy activities. The seeming clear success of the operations to overthrow Iranian populist leader Mossadegeh in 1953 and the left-leaning President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 was not without their crisis moments in the White House. In 1954 NSC 5412 provided for the establishment of a panel of designated representatives of the President and the Secretaries of State and Defense to meet regularly to review and recommend covert operations. Gordon Gray assumed the chairmanship of the "5412 Committee” as it was called, and all succeeding
National Security Advisers have chaired similar successor committees, variously named "303", "40", “Special Coordinating Committee," which, in later Presidential administrations, were charged with the review of CIA covert operations.
( http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/history.html )
Terrorism as a replacement for foreign policy, as practiced by the US government, is not conducive to world peace, even if they do call their brand of Terrorism 'Broad Spectrum Dominance.'
David Young.