The Fall of The Republic

The US is beginning to lose the ability to govern itself. States are going close to bankrupt, because politicians can't raise taxes. The Federal government has passed some reforms, but it's too early to say whether the major compromises purchased by "producer" interests, render those reforms nugatory. Most real action appears stymied, because the opposition is no longer "loyal," it is obstructionist.

The Federal government can borrow, but it's borrowing even more than it's spending on the Empire (wars, bases all over the world, fancy and over-priced materiel), but it's not borrowing from its own people. It's borrowing from foreigners (China, oil exporters, Germany).

If, as seems likely, the huge influx of corporate cash into the mid-term elections elects "free market" fundamentalists into a legislative majority in at least one house, or a stronger blocking minority, then the current Congress will actually seem functional in comparison to what we'll face in 2011.

In order for government to work, a majority ought to be able to govern. When a small minority can block (the power to put a "hold" on any piece of legislation empowers a minority of one), and 41% can effectively control the Senate, you don't have a democracy, and you don't have an effective government.

In a previous post, I mentioned a Canadian who was unable to explain to his son why the American government didn't work. In most "representative democracies," there is accountability, because the majority creates policy. In parliamentary systems, that majority also forms the government. In the US, no one is accountable. The Democrats aren't accountable, because they can't form policy if the minority objects. The President isn't accountable, because he can't overpower the minority. The minority isn't accountable, because it isn't the government.

The only accountability appears to be to the large-scale funders of campaigns and lobbies. Since they are large-scale because they have lots of money (now completely unleashed by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision), their interests heavily tilt towards: favoring wealth, favoring already powerful institutions, and favoring the status quo from which they have profited so lavishly.

That leaves out the people, especially those who need help and protection. It also leaves out meaningful responses to real problems: climate change, military expenditures, unsustainable wars and unemployment; it opposes the interests and welfare of the majority.

One example: cut Social Security and Medicare, and/or privatize both, in order to sustain our imperial expenditures--and to enable "Finance" to prey on the elderly, too.

Something like this happened with the Roman Empire: the majority was relegated to the dole; a tiny minority cornered all the wealth. If this happens now, it won't take 400 years for the system to collapse.

US Empire Pushes String

How do you push a string? How do you make a nation govern itself effectively, when its history of governance up until now has been tribal, feudal and by self-selected warlords?

Tomes cram libraries on development, development finance, development economics, and political development. Most should be pulped. What we don't know about development could fill many more libraries.

There are many success stories, nations like China, Japan, India, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa and many more, but there are no notable formulas. China has used government directed markets and state promoted industrialization, but it had a very strong, effective political system before its recent successes. India has a lively, if sometimes chaotic, political system: its economic development has been more a mixture of political direction and foreign investment.

Nations like Afghanistan or Somalia or, most egregiously, the Congo, don't have the luxury of established, effective political systems.

Well-meaning Americans and Europeans try to help these nations learn to govern themselves. In the case of Afghanistan, they are doing so while also fighting a persistent insurrection/revolution on behalf of its largely dysfunctional government.

Some of the development success stories, including Vietnam, tell how revolutionary movements, anti-western, or anti-American, created the necessary political foundation for development in their countries: imposed governments did not.

From the era of colonialism until now, western, or "developed" nations have attempted to impose their kinds of governance on "less-developed" nations, sometimes for their own national interest, sometimes for more altruistic reasons. Western-style "democracies" flourished in Europe and Japan after WWII, because there had been long-established and effective governments before the war.

But consider the case of China: the allies supported a weak, corrupt authoritarian government (Chiang-kai Shek), and attempted to counter a revolutionary movement; our attempts failed. The Communist government lurched from famine, to war, to succession crises, but it also established a political system so strong that it could mobilize nearly a billion Chinese to kill off the flies in their nation--mostly by hand! That government still governs, and by adopting western-style economics, has become wildly successful.

Ours is really a post-imperial world waiting to happen: the US can only maintain its world-straddling military by borrowing from China. Yet, it can't create civil societies in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia no matter how many troops it stations in those nations. All it can do is exacerbate tensions, which favors forces of destruction, like al Qaeda.

Yet, the military has gained enough control of American policy that it continues to expand, regardless of economic distress faced at home, or lack of success abroad.

Our foreign policy goals are wildly unrealistic: you can't push a string. Continuing our military-foreign policy abroad will not create international stability; it will only impoverish and bankrupt us.

We have a choice: a vibrant nation without an empire, or a broken nation still attempting to hold onto one.

Arizona, Global Warming and 2 Billion Headed North

What does immigration have to do with US foreign policy?

Why do illegal immigrants have a moral right to work in this country?

The Arizona law is outrageous, but not entirely so. Its justification is ineffective enforcement of immigration laws by the Feds, which in turn is due to the insupportable nature of the laws themselves.

Immigration, especially of the illegal variety, is caused by US imperial policies. With NAFTA, CAFTA and "anti-Communist," "anti-terrorist" or drug war policies, the US is massively involved in destroying jobs in other countries.

When the US insists that large US agribusiness can export subsidized corn to Mexico, for example, it causes massive displacement of campesinos from their farms. This displacement was intended to create cheap labor for the maquiladoras near the border, but not enough jobs were created. The excess jobless have nowhere to go but to el Norte.

When the US helped local elites stave off or drive out democratic governments in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and most recently, Honduras, something very similar occurred: the repressed and displaced have nowhere to go but el Norte.

When the US wages wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen, it creates huge disruption--and large numbers of refugees. The only reason we don't see more of them is distance.

When the US and other "advanced" nations do too little and too late to address climate change, disproportionately caused by us, but disproportionally affecting less developed nations, we will see even more massive dislocation of populations. If the monsoon rains fail because of climate change (there is good reason to expect this will happen) then large parts of South Asia, Southeast Asia, south China and Africa will be unable to support their huge populations.

Where will these "climate refugees" go? Two billion people or more could be headed north, to Europe, Canada, Russia and the US. And the reason would be the failure of the above "developed" nations to come up with a climate change treaty that would alleviate or reverse climate change: climate change they largely caused with two centuries of industrial development!

If climate change was largely caused by us (and Europe), and if its worst effects are felt in places like India and Bolivia, doesn't that make us morally responsible?

This is why the poor, developing nations demand "reparations:" to alleviate the effects of runaway climate change, and to respond to it, despite their own poverty--exacerbated by developed nation policies (led by the US and its corporate elites).

We should stop fooling ourselves: our imperial meddling creates illegal immigration. Two billion more could surge north, because of our inability to deal adequately with climate change. It would be like the Age of Migrations, which brought down the Roman Empire.

The corporations, which profit so handsomely from our imperial policies, should be taxed to fund developing nations' reparations.