The East-West Game

Defying and marginalizing the United States and sometimes even Europe has been the rallying cry for politicians on the rise in emerging markets and developing countries… and even for incumbent politicians wanting to stay in power. Whether it is nouveau riche Brazil – that, for no apparent reason other than to bug the U.S., brokered a deal between Iran and Turkey on the former’s disposition of spent nuclear fuel rods – or chaotic Pakistan – which appears to be supporting Taliban operatives in Afghanistan and providing safe haven within their borders for their actual combatants – opposing U.S. policy is just good politics. You sure can’t get elected telling the world how much you are going to follow the political will of the American government!

It seems to be a global trend that mirrors that infamous line in the 1932 Marx Brothers Horsefeathers film” “Whatever it is, I’m against it…” Our perception as a global bully – using our vast military resources to attempt to impose our will, usually without success – has apparently done us in, shackling even our best-intentioned diplomatic efforts. With China roaming the earth and implementing massive humanitarian aid and infrastructure investments and outright grants, replacing diplomacy-by-bribery that a deficit-impaired United States is beginning to downsize, we use a lot less carrot and a lot more stick as far as most of the rest of the earth is concerned. The democratic government that we supported to gain office against a corrupt Mubarak regime in Egypt elected a fundamentalist Islamic legislature that seems to be anything but a warm and fuzzy American ally.

And notwithstanding some painful military cuts imposed by economic necessity, the United States simply will not change its basic need to be not only the most dominant military power on earth, but to spend more on its military budget that the next ten big spender-nations combined, accounting for just under half of all military spending on earth. It is a vicious circle: our military efforts around the world piss people off so that they really do not want to cooperate with us, so we build a stronger military to convince them by other means. Further, the “economy through excessive debt” that literally collapsed the global economy is still attributed to the United States, whose government and financial institution led the way, established the bona fides of excessive borrowing, in an economic greed-driven system that failed all of us. That the international community voluntarily went along with the scheme seems irrelevant in the blame game.

As world leaders meet in Turkey to attempt to contain Iranian nuclear efforts with unlikely good results, as Russian leaders defy western pressure to aid in controlling rogue-Syria, as North Korea defies the United States with its (failed) rocket launch and as China writes off America’s role in the future as being on “the wrong side of history,” Pakistan has elected to add some more defiant fuel to the fire: “As the U.S. and Pakistan struggle to patch up frayed ties, plans for a Pakistani-Iranian natural gas pipeline further threaten the fragile partnership…Pakistan desperately needs new energy sources and has made it clear that it plans to forge ahead with the pipeline to bring in natural gas from Iran, despite warnings from the U.S. that Islamabad could be hit with economic sanctions if it follows through with the project.” Los Angeles Times, April 13^th.

With over 20% of Pakistani vehicles and about half its factories running on natural gas, Pakistan’s internal production levels simply do not meet its needs, and a proposed U.S. pipeline alternative from gas-producing Turkmenistan is rejected as unsupportable since it runs through even more unstable Afghanistan. They say they desperately need this fuel to survive. “The effort to scuttle the pipeline venture is part of Washington's bid to economically squeeze the Iranian government, which it believes is intent on building nuclear weapons. A similar imposition of sanctions on Pakistan could devastate the country's economy, already weakened by years of militancy and overburdened by debt to international lenders.” LA Times. Yep, sanctions will win ‘em over!

Bottom line: why is it that what we want politically becomes a global mandate? Here are the questions those developing nations are asking. Why does it matter either to the folks we are pressuring or even to us for Americans to determine local choices? Is the Pakistani pipeline that will take years to build enough to enable Iran to have the proscribed nuclear weapons that American policy has stated will never be acceptable? Why is it OK that many nations in Western Europe, the United States, Russia, China, India, North Korea and Pakistan to have nuclear weapons but not anyone else? And why are we seemingly willing to use military force in Iran but we didn’t in even more dangerous North Korea? Because China would have defended them? Why does the United States – the big bully – have any rights to interfere with the internal political decisions of any nation other than itself, particularly if it does not entail genocide?

The mere fact that we want something makes push-back inevitable. Guess we better increase our military budget so we can make all these countries do what we want… Forget that we are slowly bankrupting ourselves in that effort. We need to find ways other than expensive force and powerful economic threats to foment global policies that genuinely benefit the American public.

I’m Peter Dekom, and our macro-stupidity is costing us hundreds of billions of wasted tax dollars every year.