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I am apalled by the domination of "American imperialism" values in these discussion boards. Here is something I've prepared for all of you guys. Hope you'll read it to the end and discuss it.
Basically, a State is an organisation which owns the "violence monopoly" over a given territory. Just think of feudal Afghanistan: it is not a true state, because no one holds the power.
To this point in human history, States have not delegated to anyone the monopoly of violence in international relations. Things are headed in this direction, however. A few centuries might pass, but it will eventually become a reality. It remains to see if this worldwide police will defend justice and human rights (personally, I highly doubt it).
No police=perpetual war between countries vying for power. This war is not always armed; it is usually economic and diplomatic. But it's still here, and it obeys to no morale whatsoever.
As far as I know, no democratic state has systematically applied the values behind its Constitution to its foreign policy, unless in isolated cases or when these values were found to be in accordance with commercial or political interests. The reason for this is quite simple: the Welfare state has given its citizens a fair dose of social justice, which can be used to hide atrocities directly or indirectly committed outside of its borders. Machiavelli calls this "Comfort and Indifference". Stanley Milgram used a different, psychological approach, in which he determined that people could operate a machine that tortured someone if the said person was in another room (and out of visual sight of the torturer). When the "victim" was moved closer, the rate of success of the experiment dropped from 67% to approx. 40%.
Now, most right-wingers, supported by media trusts, have made you believe that free-market is at the root of the success of the Western world. Saying that this is a barbaric lie would be an understatement.
Everything that made the succes of Western democracies, is in fact, the opposite of free-market.
In the 19th century, labor unions and strikes were forbidden by law, and child labor was common. Workers in France, USA, Canada, Britain were brutalized by the police or private security guards when they comlained about their condition. Child mortality was higher than in today's third world countries. Gradually, laws protecting basic worker rights were enacted, such as minimal wages, forbidding of child labor, legalization of worker unions. The forbidding of labor unions are a prime example of injustice: if industrials have the right to form conglomerates and oligopolies, why wouldn't the workers have the right to unite themselves? Free-market is a two way things, mind you. Socialist policies made the working class increasingly richer, to the point, as mentionned by Henry Ford, that it could buy the products it was manufacturing. It was only after the lesson of the Great Depression that this fact became widely accepted, however.
The importance of Labor Unions in the economic development of a country was so obvious that American Unions, confronted by their success, formed international unions aimed at syndicalizing poorer countries, to avoid their own jobs being exported over there. This is where globalization (slowly) starts.
(To be more specific, globalization has been going on from the beginning of the 20th century. Its pace has greatly accelerated after the fall of the USSR).
Benefitting from relative social peace in their home countries, enterprises started putting pressure on their governments to open acces to the worldwide markets, where the workforce is much cheaper, social policies virtually non-existent, and, better still, brute force readily available as a coercition tool.
Ergo, WTO, FTAA, GATT, World Bank, etc. All those are puppets of the United States and its allies. They are a tool to enforce economic domination and isolation against countries that are not willing to abdicate their sovereignty to free trade necessities.
Thirld World now=Western world 150 years ago (not in all respects, but many). They don't need free market; they need state-funded education (which is lacking), they need drinking water, they need acces to cheap drugs and basic healthcare. They need the profits of their natural resources to fund economic development in their own country, not to fill the pockets of some baby-boomer shareholder in New York or London.
Without state regulations, enterprises will never grant a single cent to an unspecialized workforce, simply because there are billions in the world, starving, that will work for a ridiculous pay. As long as there is some easy, repetitive work to do, and that the pure law of demand/offer is applied to employment, people will be exploited. This is why free market cannot be succesful in countries with low infrastructure and education levels. There are too much of them. Until every human being in the world is a valuable specialist, there needs to be some regulation preventing free market from instillling a perpetual, unbreakable domination. For this to happen, we need everyone to be educated. We also need to forbid child labor, so that children can go to school (half of the world's cocoa is produced by enslaved children).
And guess what? America's foreign policy is based on forcing other countries to accept free market as it is, without regards to their own benefit. Their main tool is economic sanctions (see: Cuba), but they do not hesitate to use brute force when needed (Vietnam, funding of the Contras against the Sandinists, funding of the coup against Salvador Allende). This will not change as long as huge corporations are the principal donators to Republican and Democrat campaigns (the only two parties that have access to the White House).
There is something you can do about it. First, forbidding enterprises from donating to political parties is a step in the right direction. Many states have adopted a system in which 1 vote=1$ transferred to the party with public funds. This is not perfect, but it's better than Halliburton handing out 5 millions to Bush's campaign.
You can also ask for a dramatic change: demand that foreign countries who wish to export to the US must obey to a "minimal worker condition deal". Economic sanctions would be directed at those countries who do not follow it, instead of the current system where they are used against socialist states.
Vote for someone supporting the Tobin Tax: basically, this one says that by taking a few cents on each stock market transaction, you could amass billions over billions of money that could be directed towards humanitarian aid.
Above all, don't expect CNN or FOX news to tell you what I've been telling you in the last few hundred words.
As long as the US doesn't change its tone, I will consider it an Evil Empire, keen on extending its domination to nurture wealth in their homeland at the detrimen of 66% of the world's population.
Basically, a State is an organisation which owns the "violence monopoly" over a given territory. Just think of feudal Afghanistan: it is not a true state, because no one holds the power.
To this point in human history, States have not delegated to anyone the monopoly of violence in international relations. Things are headed in this direction, however. A few centuries might pass, but it will eventually become a reality. It remains to see if this worldwide police will defend justice and human rights (personally, I highly doubt it).
No police=perpetual war between countries vying for power. This war is not always armed; it is usually economic and diplomatic. But it's still here, and it obeys to no morale whatsoever.
As far as I know, no democratic state has systematically applied the values behind its Constitution to its foreign policy, unless in isolated cases or when these values were found to be in accordance with commercial or political interests. The reason for this is quite simple: the Welfare state has given its citizens a fair dose of social justice, which can be used to hide atrocities directly or indirectly committed outside of its borders. Machiavelli calls this "Comfort and Indifference". Stanley Milgram used a different, psychological approach, in which he determined that people could operate a machine that tortured someone if the said person was in another room (and out of visual sight of the torturer). When the "victim" was moved closer, the rate of success of the experiment dropped from 67% to approx. 40%.
Now, most right-wingers, supported by media trusts, have made you believe that free-market is at the root of the success of the Western world. Saying that this is a barbaric lie would be an understatement.
Everything that made the succes of Western democracies, is in fact, the opposite of free-market.
In the 19th century, labor unions and strikes were forbidden by law, and child labor was common. Workers in France, USA, Canada, Britain were brutalized by the police or private security guards when they comlained about their condition. Child mortality was higher than in today's third world countries. Gradually, laws protecting basic worker rights were enacted, such as minimal wages, forbidding of child labor, legalization of worker unions. The forbidding of labor unions are a prime example of injustice: if industrials have the right to form conglomerates and oligopolies, why wouldn't the workers have the right to unite themselves? Free-market is a two way things, mind you. Socialist policies made the working class increasingly richer, to the point, as mentionned by Henry Ford, that it could buy the products it was manufacturing. It was only after the lesson of the Great Depression that this fact became widely accepted, however.
The importance of Labor Unions in the economic development of a country was so obvious that American Unions, confronted by their success, formed international unions aimed at syndicalizing poorer countries, to avoid their own jobs being exported over there. This is where globalization (slowly) starts.
(To be more specific, globalization has been going on from the beginning of the 20th century. Its pace has greatly accelerated after the fall of the USSR).
Benefitting from relative social peace in their home countries, enterprises started putting pressure on their governments to open acces to the worldwide markets, where the workforce is much cheaper, social policies virtually non-existent, and, better still, brute force readily available as a coercition tool.
Ergo, WTO, FTAA, GATT, World Bank, etc. All those are puppets of the United States and its allies. They are a tool to enforce economic domination and isolation against countries that are not willing to abdicate their sovereignty to free trade necessities.
Thirld World now=Western world 150 years ago (not in all respects, but many). They don't need free market; they need state-funded education (which is lacking), they need drinking water, they need acces to cheap drugs and basic healthcare. They need the profits of their natural resources to fund economic development in their own country, not to fill the pockets of some baby-boomer shareholder in New York or London.
Without state regulations, enterprises will never grant a single cent to an unspecialized workforce, simply because there are billions in the world, starving, that will work for a ridiculous pay. As long as there is some easy, repetitive work to do, and that the pure law of demand/offer is applied to employment, people will be exploited. This is why free market cannot be succesful in countries with low infrastructure and education levels. There are too much of them. Until every human being in the world is a valuable specialist, there needs to be some regulation preventing free market from instillling a perpetual, unbreakable domination. For this to happen, we need everyone to be educated. We also need to forbid child labor, so that children can go to school (half of the world's cocoa is produced by enslaved children).
And guess what? America's foreign policy is based on forcing other countries to accept free market as it is, without regards to their own benefit. Their main tool is economic sanctions (see: Cuba), but they do not hesitate to use brute force when needed (Vietnam, funding of the Contras against the Sandinists, funding of the coup against Salvador Allende). This will not change as long as huge corporations are the principal donators to Republican and Democrat campaigns (the only two parties that have access to the White House).
There is something you can do about it. First, forbidding enterprises from donating to political parties is a step in the right direction. Many states have adopted a system in which 1 vote=1$ transferred to the party with public funds. This is not perfect, but it's better than Halliburton handing out 5 millions to Bush's campaign.
You can also ask for a dramatic change: demand that foreign countries who wish to export to the US must obey to a "minimal worker condition deal". Economic sanctions would be directed at those countries who do not follow it, instead of the current system where they are used against socialist states.
Vote for someone supporting the Tobin Tax: basically, this one says that by taking a few cents on each stock market transaction, you could amass billions over billions of money that could be directed towards humanitarian aid.
Above all, don't expect CNN or FOX news to tell you what I've been telling you in the last few hundred words.
As long as the US doesn't change its tone, I will consider it an Evil Empire, keen on extending its domination to nurture wealth in their homeland at the detrimen of 66% of the world's population.
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