From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Mon Mar 03 2003 - 06:56:48 MST
Samantha Atkins writes:
> If we attack on such weak grounds it could well be the beginning
> of the end of the US.
Which may not be so bad. Consider this recent column in the Guardian:
<<Out of the wreckage
By tearing up the global rulebook, the US is in fact undermining its own
imperial rule
George Monbiot
Tuesday February 25, 2003
The Guardian
[...]
By wrecking the multilateral system for the sake of a few short-term,
corporate interests, the US is, paradoxically, threatening its own
tyrannical control of other nations. The existing international
agencies, fashioned by means of brutal power politics at the end of the
second world war, have permitted the US to develop its international
commercial and political interests more effectively than it could have
done alone.
The institutions through which it has worked - the security council, the
WTO, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank - have provided
a semblance of legitimacy for what has become, in all but name, the
construction of empire. The end of multilateralism would force the US,
as it is already beginning to do, to drop this pretence and frankly
admit to its imperial designs on the rest of the world. This admission,
in turn, forces other nations to seek to resist it. Effective resistance
would create the political space in which their citizens could begin to
press for a new, more equitable multilateralism.
There are several means of contesting the unilateral power of the US,
but perhaps the most immediate and effective one is to accelerate its
economic crisis. Already, strategists in China are suggesting that the
yuan should replace the dollar as east Asia's reserve currency. Over the
past year, as the Observer revealed on Sunday, the euro has started to
challenge the dollar's position as the international means of payment
for oil. The dollar's dominance of world trade, particularly the oil
market, is all that permits the US Treasury to sustain the nation's
massive deficit, as it can print inflation-free money for global
circulation. If the global demand for dollars falls, the value of the
currency will fall with it, and speculators will shift their assets into
euros or yen or even yuan, with the result that the US economy will
begin to totter.
[...]
America's assertions of independence from the rest of the world force
the rest of the world to assert its independence from America. They
permit the people of the weaker nations to contemplate the global
democratic revolution that is long overdue.
>>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,902365,00.html
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