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TPSIPOL FORUM: DEMOCRATIC RED (RED)
COLUMN OSWALDO DE RIVERO
RED
http://oswaldoderivero.blogspot.com/
DOSSIER
GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Wall Street
geopolitical consequences. 14/11/2008
http://reddemocratica.blogspot.com/
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(RED / GENEVA)
The fall of the Berlin Wall the collapse of Wall Street.
(*) Oswaldo de Rivero
Published in the Journal Le Monde Diplomatique in its issue of November. Article submitted by the author for publication in the Democratic Network. Any reference to this information, mention the source is appreciated.
Arts. Rels. Reflections
the foot of the crisis
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DOSSIER: Global financial crisis
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Wall Street.
(*) Oswaldo de Rivero
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(RED-Geneva)
When the Berlin Wall was torn down there was no private bank in the Soviet Union. Today there are many in Russia, while in the U.S., is just quasi-nationalize major banks and financial institutions. This unimaginable situation is a great trick that history has done to all who claim to know their place. So we can be sure that the international instability and lawlessness that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall have not ceased with the collapse of Wall Street.
Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the sharp ex-Soviet Director of the Institute of USA and Canada, Georgi Arbatov, said the worst damage they had caused the USSR to the United States is depriving him of an enemy . (1) The current situation seems to confirm this prediction. No enemy, the Bush administration, his neoconservative advisors, Pentagon generals and bankers on Wall Street believed the "Masters of Universe", seeking perpetual military supremacy and global financial dominance.
With the Bush administration, the Pentagon became more powerful than ever, even began to dictate the agenda of preemptive war illegal and continued arming the U.S. with a range of expensive weapons in the state of the art, to achieve supremacy against any military power, but ultimately did little to fight asymmetric conflict against terrorism. In addition, the U.S. entangled in a misguided war in Iraq, now it is physically and financially hemorrhaging.
At the same time, the bankers of Wall Street set out to invent a variety of complicated financial products that made Wall Street and the international financial system today a huge casino has collapsed at an approximate cost of $ 2.8 trillion, (2) affects millions of people including who never played in it, as is the case with the new 20 million unemployed International Labour Organization estimates there will be in 2009 as a result of the global financial crisis (3).
Lack of market and market excess
The U.S. military and financial degradation, makes one think, not only in the prediction of Georgi Arbatov, but also in what he said once the physical Leo Szilard nuclear, that the two superpowers could not live without each other, that the collapse of the Soviet empire would collapse the American Empire. The truth is that this has not happened yet. However, if we examine the collapse of the USSR and current deterioration of U.S. geopolitical power we see that both are related to the market. The Berlin Wall collapsed due to lack of market and Wall Street has collapsed due to excessive market. The first resulted from a centrally planned system to supplant the market wanted and ended up planning for the shortage. The second was the result of market deregulation that led to speculation of financial products and nothing complicated clear that eventually engulf the entire global financial market.
However, the difference between the two collapses, is that the Berlin Wall and it was always centrally planned economies and brought down the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, while the collapse of Wall Street not the end of the market economy, but an extreme form of this (deregulated finance) and it has not collapsed to the United States and its NATO allies.
Today there is no economic instrument that can replace monetary exchange of goods and services making the market. Had various forms can capitalism depending on how they regulate or not regulate the market, but the market is not a product of capitalism, but on the contrary, it is an economic instrument invented long before Jesus Christ, who in his time merchants who were already expelled from the Temple and also used the Cesar currency.
The fall of the Berlin Wall caused the disappearance of the USSR as a global superpower and made the world stage to return to Russia as a Eurasian regional power. According to Putin was a huge geopolitical cataclysm. In contrast, the collapse of Wall Street is a major geopolitical earthquake, which does not convert the U.S. into a regional power, but is strong enough to completely degrade the global unipolar power.
Indeed, the Wall Street crash and severe recession that will affect strategic military power of the United States and is degraded by the failure of the occupation and nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan as viable states and democratic. Also the financial crisis and economic downturn will make it more difficult to maintain 700 military bases the U.S. has to project its power globally. (See sidebar: "A Bankrupt Superpower")
Wall Street's collapse also occurs when the Bush administration has demolished softpower (ideological power) American. The promotion of human rights and democracy that were the foundation of the American ideology is now in tatters, after the scandals of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the torture and the famous "renditions" that is, the abduction of terror suspects to be sent to interview close friends in non-human rights. Softpower This destruction of the United States will further increase the rescue of Wall Street banks because it demonstrates that the U.S. does not practice the neoliberal ideology that preaches.
With the global financial crisis, the world begins to realize that neoliberalism is a false liberalism that financial markets not self-correcting, they need regulation to avoid becoming financial weapons of mass destruction. Soon also the ordinary people will realize that neoliberalism is also a false trade liberalism. The crisis, global recession and protectionist tendencies that emerge, reveal that free trade is practiced in only one direction. The only ones who have released their trade are developing countries, through adjustments of the IMF and free trade, while the United States, the European Union and OECD all spend hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to their agriculture , hundreds of branches with excess industrial and protect intellectual property. So many people wonder why the radical left attack a global free trade, which actually does not exist.
The non-polar disorder and instability
Just as the collapse of the Berlin Wall changed the world power bipolar unipolar, severe financial crisis and global recession will end the American unipolar power and will open a apolar new geopolitical era, where neither the U.S. nor any other major power, have the strategic ability to control a growing international anarchy and establish a new world order. (4)
this unipolar system being replaced by a non-polar and not by a multipolar, as some believe, because there multipolarity is necessary that the most powerful, the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France split the world power, or Otherwise, fight, including him. None of this is happening. Today the United States can not dominate the world and its allies, the European Union and Japan, are far from able to do so, in contrast, need to be protected by the United States if they have problems with Russia and China, which , after replacing the autocratic capitalism communism do not compete against the U.S. for world domination. China only want the United States not to interfere in the problems of Tibet and Taiwan. Russia wants the same thing, against the ex-Soviet republics that it considers its sphere of influence.
Thus the world, not unipolar or multipolar system, up to the apolarity. United States is no longer the sheriff of the global village and no one can replace him. We are witnessing the birth of a new geopolitical era, where all the great powers are conspicuous by their impotence in front of a chaotic and fragmented world of poverty, terrorism, civil wars, genocide, ethnic cleansing, trafficking in drugs, weapons and people.
apolar
This new era, now the financial crisis and global recession force propelled, may cause specific geopolitical situations such as those listed below:
-End of unilateral diplomacy of the United States through close coordination with allies and other states.
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U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq within 18 months and focus more forces in Afghanistan and it's border with Pakistan. Intensification of the war with the Taliban and their tribal allies. (Barak Obama)
-Consolidation of the Shiite alliance, between the governments of Iraq and Iran after the U.S. unemployment. Possibilities of civil war with Sunnis and Kurds.
-Continuation of the difficulties for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority because of divisions among Palestinians and in the Government of Israel and especially the loss of power of persuasion of the United States in the Middle East-Mayor
use of mercenaries by the United States in its military operations.
-strengthening Russian influence over its ex-Soviet environment and China on Tibet.
-Continuation of nuclear proliferation in Iran and possibly other states. Difficulties in
advocacy humamos rights and democracy in Russia, China and other countries with autocratic regimes and authoritarian in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
-Return of the United States to Latin America to consolidate and strengthen democratic allies in Latin American armies to combat terrorism, drug trafficking and crime. Increased
-ethnic wars, religious and political and the collapse of poor countries ungovernable chaotic entities (ECIS), mainly in Africa and other underdeveloped regions. Increase in gross violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.
-significant increase in overall crime, drug trafficking, weapons and people.
-Degradation of operations of United Nations peace through indifference or disagreement among the permanent members of the Security Council and also by lack of resources due to global economic crisis.
In conclusion, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Wall Street have shown that ideological concepts, for and against the market, such as those inspired central planning and wanted to supplant that inspired the so-called invisible hand directs and corrects him are false, dangerous and above all, ethically unacceptable. The first because it only works under totalitarianism and the second because he preaches that the sum of all selfishness creates prosperity. Ultimately, the fall of real socialism and the collapse of deregulated financial capitalism are the result of moral decay that has been stripped of ethical content of economic activities and has opened a non-polar geopolitical era, full of instability and violence.
Geneva, October 30, 2008
NOTES.
1 .- William Pfaff. Herald Tribune. October 3, 2008. 2 .-
BBC News. November 28, 2008.
3.-Report of the Director General. International Labour Organization. ILO Website. November 28, 2008. 4.-
Oswaldo de Rivero. Power without power. Make that 153. March-April 2005
(*) Former Ambassador of Peru to the United Nations
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