Clinton in Burma: Another US move against China

By Peter Symonds , WSWS.ORG

The three-day visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Burma (Myanmar) this week featured prominent meetings with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and a great deal of hypocritical hype about American support for “democratic rights.” The real aim of Clinton’s visit, however, was to further the Obama administration’s concerted campaign to undermine the influence of China throughout Asia.

The trip—the first by a US Secretary of State for more than 50 years—was announced just two weeks ago at the East Asian Summit, where Obama intensified pressure on China over disputes in the South China Sea. Obama was determined to seize on signs that the Burmese junta was seeking an accommodation with the US to loosen the regime’s close economic and strategic ties with Beijing.

In pointed comments before arriving in Burma, Clinton told an aid conference that developing countries should be “smart shoppers” and be wary of taking assistance from donors—like China—that were more interested “in extracting your resources, than in building your capacity.” The message was obviously addressed to Burma, among others, which is heavily dependent on Chinese economic aid and investment.

Clinton explained that she had come to “test the true intentions” of the junta and would make no significant concessions by Washington. She met with Burmese President Thein Sein on Thursday in the country’s artificial new capital of Naypyidaw, warning that recent political steps, while welcome, were “just a beginning.” Over the past year, the regime has released Suu Kyi from house arrest, handed nominal power to a civilian president and permitted Suu Kyi and her opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) to run in upcoming by-elections.

The Burmese government is anxious to reach a rapprochement with Washington that would ease its heavy dependence on Beijing, end Western sanctions and allow the transformation of the country into a new cheap labour platform. Thein Sein described Clinton’s visit as “a historic milestone” that he hoped would open a “new chapter in relations.”

In comments reported in Time, presidential political adviser Nay Zin Latt pointed to some of the junta’s motivations. “Before, whether we liked it or not, we had to take what China had to offer. When sanctions are lifted, it will be better for everyone in Myanmar,” he said.

An Asia Times article entitled “China embrace too strong for Naypyidaw” traces the regime’s shifting orientation back to a power struggle that took place in 2004 when then prime minister Khin Nyunt, regarded as “China’s man” was removed on corruption charges. It pointed to Chinese anger in 2009 over the Burmese army’s treatment of Chinese nationals inside northern Burma and to a recent decision to shelve a major Chinese-funded dam project.

Despite these tensions, the Burmese regime wants to keep Beijing on side. On Monday, prior to Clinton’s arrival, the country’s top general, Min Aung Hlaing, went to Beijing to reassure top Chinese political and military leaders of the junta’s continuing collaboration. Beijing has invested considerable resources in fostering an economic and strategic relationship that provides China with raw materials and direct access to the Indian Ocean.

China has begun energy pipelines through Burma to southern China as part of Beijing’s efforts to limit its reliance on the Malacca Strait to import oil from the Middle East and Africa. The strategy is aimed at countering Pentagon plans to control key “choke points” such as the Malacca Strait and thus have the ability to impose a naval blockade on China.

Speaking on Chinese Central Television, academic Gao Zugui highlighted Beijing’s fears, saying: “The US wants to strengthen relations with lower Mekong countries like Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. We can see this intention is strong, and it is very clearly targetting China.”

Burmese presidential adviser Nay Zin Latt also pointed to events in the Middle East as another motivation for improving relations with the US. “We do not want an Arab Spring here,” he said. The regime is concerned not only about the prospects of wide scale anti-government protests, which it has ruthlessly suppressed in the past, but also about the way in which the US exploited social unrest in Libya to intervene militarily to install a pro-American client regime.

Clinton arrived in Burma with a list of demands, including greater political freedom for the bourgeois opposition led by Suu Kyi; an ending of the protracted conflicts with the country’s ethnic minorities; and inspections of the country’s limited nuclear program by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In return, Clinton offered very little. “We are prepared to go further if the reforms maintain momentum. But history teaches us to be cautious,” she said, adding that “we are not ready to discuss” lifting sanctions. Nor is the US proposing to establish full diplomatic relations with Burma. Clinton indicated only that the US would no longer block financing from international institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and will support the expansion of UN development grants for health care and small businesses.

Significantly, Clinton invited Burma to join the Lower Mekong Initiative as a means of further loosening its ties to Beijing. The grouping, which includes Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, was created by Washington in 2009 as a means of exerting a greater regional influence. The choice of name was quite deliberate—the “lower” Mekong region by definition excluded the “upper” Mekong inside China. The US is hoping to exploit grievances over China, including the impact of Chinese dam projects on the Mekong River.

Clinton also suggested that the US and Burma collaborate in the recovering the remains of about 600 soldiers who died in the country during World War II. The proposal is similar to the joint US activities in Vietnam to locate missing American soldiers. It provides a convenient pretext for establishing direct contact between the Burmese and American military.

Clinton met twice with opposition leader Suu Kyi on Thursday and Friday in Rangoon. The Obama administration is collaborating closely with the Burmese opposition as it seeks to fashion a regime more closely aligned with American interests. Obama rang Suu Kyi from Bali two weeks ago just prior to announcing Clinton’s visit.

Suu Kyi has endorsed the US strategy in its entirety, again demonstrating that the Burmese opposition is not motivated by concerns about the democratic rights of ordinary working people. Rather Suu Kyi represents sections of the Burmese ruling elite who have been marginalised by decades of military rule and are pushing for close ties with Western powers and an opening up of the country to foreign investment.

Having boycotted the junta’s sham elections last year, Suu Kyi has now indicated that she and the NLD will stand in by-elections despite their anti-democratic character. In a video conference with the Council on Foreign Relations, Suu Kyi declared that she trusted President Thein Sein, a former general and longstanding junta apparatchik.

Suu Kyi is hoping to leverage US support to reach an arrangement with the junta that will allow the NLD to have a greater political say and give more economic opportunities to the business layers that support the opposition. Like the junta itself, Suu Kyi has expressed concern that there should be no “Arab Spring” in Burma—that is, no mass protests by the working class and rural masses.

A Wall Street Journal article entitled “Firms see Myanmar as next frontier” pointed to the benefits anticipated by major corporations from any economic opening up of the country. Business delegations are already beginning to flow into Burma keen to exploit its potential markets and rich natural resources, including gas and oil. The article noted Burma’s advantages as a cheap labour platform with “low manufacturing wages”, an intellectual class that speaks English and a legal system rooted in British common law.

While economic considerations are clearly a motivation, the primary aim of the Obama administration is to undercut China’s relations with Burma as it seeks to develop anti-China alliances throughout the region.

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Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy in Burma

K. Ratnayake, WSWS.ORG

US calls for “democracy” in Burma are a convenient screen behind which talks with the dictatorial regime are to take place. Obama has demanded Suu Kyi’s release as the precondition for better relations, not because she is a “champion of democracy”, but because she represents sections of the Burmese bourgeoisie, who are oriented to the West and to the further transformation of the country into a cheap labour platform for transnational corporations.

The release of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on November 14 has become an occasion for another outpouring of media panegyrics to this “icon of democracy” and speculation about the possibilities for “reform” and “democracy” in the country.

Suu Kyi, however, has already made clear that she has no intention of challenging the Burmese junta. Rather, with the backing particularly of the United States, she is seeking a deal with the country’s generals. Suu Kyi has hinted that she is ready to reverse her previous stance and call for the easing or lifting of US and European sanctions in return for concessions from the generals—all in the name of helping the Burmese people.

None of this political manoeuvring by Suu Kyi has anything to do with concern for the democratic rights or the appalling living conditions of the Burmese masses. Her willingness to negotiate with the junta is bound up with a tactical shift by the Obama administration since September 2009. Washington has adopted a “carrot and sticks” approach to the Burmese generals: the offer of improved diplomatic and economic relations if an accommodation with Suu Kyi is reached, and the threat of tougher US measures, including human rights charges against the junta leaders, if not.

Obama’s policy toward Burma is part of an aggressive drive throughout Asia to undermine the influence of Washington’s rival—China. Obama and his officials have been engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity designed to strengthen existing military alliances, including with Japan and South Korea, forge closer strategic ties with countries like India, and prise close Chinese partners like Burma from Beijing’s sphere of influence.

US calls for “democracy” in Burma are a convenient screen behind which talks with the dictatorial regime are to take place. Obama has demanded Suu Kyi’s release as the precondition for better relations, not because she is a “champion of democracy”, but because she represents sections of the Burmese bourgeoisie, who are oriented to the West and to the further transformation of the country into a cheap labour platform for transnational corporations.

Suu Kyi is also a useful safety valve for the deep-seated hostility among broad masses of working people to the junta’s oppressive regime. She has in the past exploited opposition movements against the military to press for concessions while at the same time preventing protests from threatening the foundations of capitalist rule. Above all, this was the role that Suu Kyi and her party played in the tumultuous events of August-September 1988.

Student protests against the regime earlier in 1988 began to involve broader layers of the population, fed up with the lack of democratic rights, deteriorating living standards and police repression. The demonstrations dramatically escalated after junta leader General Ne Win stepped down in July and was replaced by Sein Lwin, notorious for his repressive methods. In preparation for a major national demonstration on August 8, there were a series of smaller protests, the formation of neighbourhood and strike committees and a call for a general strike.

The junta responded to the large protests on August 8 by firing into the crowds, killing hundreds, but the general strike proceeded and demonstrations continued. Stoppages in Rangoon, Mandalay and other cities drew in government employees, oil workers, rail workers, dock workers and others, and brought transportation and economic activity to a halt. In Rangoon, whole neighbourhoods were controlled by opposition committees. In the countryside, farmers began to protest in support of their demands.

For more than a month, the junta was paralysed. On August 12, Lwin resigned without explanation and was replaced by Maung Maung, a civilian supporter of the junta, who appeared conciliatory. He ended martial law and offered a referendum on multi-party rule. Soldiers and police acted more cautiously, which encouraged more people to join the opposition. Hundreds of thousands of people joined new national protests on August 22.

It was not until August 26 that Suu Kyi, along with other bourgeois opposition figures, stepped in—to act as brake on the mass movement, particularly of workers, that had brought the junta to the brink of collapse. Speaking to a crowd estimated at half a million on that day, she urged people to “try to forget what has already taken place”. She called on protesters “not to lose their affection for the army” and to achieve their demands by “peaceful means”.

Suu Kyi’s intervention provided the junta with the critical breathing space that it desperately needed. While rejecting Maung’s proposal for a referendum, Suu Kyi promoted the fatal illusion that the demands of working people would be met through an election. Right up to the military crackdown on September 18, opposition leaders called for people to be “patient”, saying they were sure that Maung would hand power to an interim government and allow free elections.

Instead, General Saw Maung dismissed the government, established the State Law and Restoration Council (SLRC), declared martial law and ordered troops to crush the protests. At least 3,000 people were killed in Rangoon alone and many more in Mandalay and other areas. Thousands were arrested. Others fled the country or to the countryside.

Suu Kyi condemned the repression but urged people to wait for the elections that the regime had promised. While her National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide victory in the 1990 poll, the junta, having secured its control over the country, dismissed the result. The generals kept Suu Kyi under house arrest, detained other NLD figures and ignored the sanctions imposed by the US and its European allies.

Suu Kyi and the NLD played a similar role in 2007 when large demonstrations against the junta erupted, sparked initially by the protests of monks. From the outset, Suu Kyi insisted that the movement should not challenge the generals. “There should be no agitation to topple the military regime. It will make people much more wary of a military response and people will become reluctant to join the movement,” she said.

The conclusion that Suu Kyi has sought to instil from the 1988 political upheavals is that the protests went too far, provoked the army repression and should never be repeated. In fact, the opposite is the case. The opposition movement remained under the domination of figures like Suu Kyi who held it back precisely at the point that the generals were most vulnerable. The working class that had played the central role in bringing the junta to its knees lacked the leadership necessary to challenge the NLD and make a bid for the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ government based on socialist policies.

The events of 1988 to 1990 are an object lesson in Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution, which demonstrates the organic incapacity of any section of the bourgeoisie in countries of a belated capitalist development such as Burma to meet the democratic aspirations and social needs of working people. Only the working class, by winning the allegiance of the urban and rural poor, can carry out those tasks as part of the broader struggle for socialism in South East Asia and internationally.

That is the revolutionary perspective for which the International Committee of the Fourth International fights. We urge workers and youth to seriously study our history and program and take up the challenge of building a section of the world Trotskyist movement in Burma.

K. Ratnayake

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CONTROVERSY: Occupy And The Importance Of Not Asking For Permission

“Permissioning” is not required by the Constitution. Period. But with the scoundrels in the High Court these days, don’t bet on it. —Eds
This piece has been annotated. Some points clearly need further debating by activists.

BY ALLISON KILKENNY, IN THESE TIMES

Is this what they mean by Occupying the Democratic Party? Occupy DC protest in front of the W Hotel in Washington where a Democratic party fundraiser was taking place on December 1. (Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

There’s an interesting debate happening right now among Occupy participants and Progressives observing the movement about what the best strategy is for the group moving forward. Rather than delving into the endless sea of advice heaved at the protesters on a daily basis about what their ten-point policy plan should look like, I want to examine the issue more broadly.

David Atkins wrote a blog post yesterday that stated OWS could draw lessons from the Egyptian election in which the liberal parties and youth activists failed to compete with Islamists who emerged from the Mubarak years. “There is a lesson here,” Atkins writes. “No matter how well-intentioned the revolutionaries and no matter how successful the revolution, at the end of the day organizational power will step in to win the day.” While Atkins is clearly sympathetic to those who seek “anti-organizational” and “apolitical solutions to America’s problems,” he adds that “those who either refuse to or fall behind in the participating in the process, like the liberals and secularists in Egypt, will find themselves at the mercy of those who do.”

Atkins’ advice is to “Occupy the Democratic Party,” a well-intentioned suggestion that Occupy has been hearing since its inception.

Journalist Austin G. Mackell, who has been covering the Egyptian revolution since its beginning, remarked that this is akin to “a bunch of environmentalists joining the loggers guild, to you know, change things from inside the system.”

Atkins clarifies that he doesn’t mean Occupy should necessarily get involved within the Party, but perhaps protesters could instead create separate organizations that are designed to “instill fear” of the base and of primary challenges in Party politicians. Alas, Atkins seems to have much faith in America’s electoral system that consistently shuts out marginalized voices such as Ralph Nader and Ron Paul.

I want to unpack the concept of “instilling fear” a bit here because the obvious parallels between the civil rights movements and Occupy are too great to ignore. Like Occupy, civil rights leaders didn’t ask permission to protest, and while Martin Luther King Jr. did ultimately form a tentative alliance with Lyndon Johnson, (though it was no love affair — Johnson once said King was a “hypocrite preacher”) in order to see the landmark passages of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the real struggle happened on the ground in acts of civil disobedience. It took horrible footage of police dousing protesters with firehoses and unleashing ferocious attack dogs on innocent protesters to capture national, and the President’s, attention.

But the comparison between the two movements is shaky in other areas. In the 1960s, the concept of civil rights was a truly terrifying concept to white southerners (and many northerners,) so I don’t want to diminish the struggle MLK and others endured to see these acts passed. However, while a political partnership was possible between MLK and LBJ, it’s difficult to see how Occupy will form a similar partnership considering their demands would mean their politician allies would be engaging in career suicide by angering their corporate donors.

Yes, there is a legend that after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, he turned to an aide and said, “We have lost the South for a generation,” but with a two-party stranglehold on the country, which no third party can hope to compete in, and is now funded by massive corporations, Democrats have grown to stop fearing their constituents and start fearing the upper brass at Goldman Sachs and Exxon Mobil.

Occupy is attempting huge feats here, and while some emerging demands (reinstating portions of Glass-Steagall, for example) seem more manageable, there is also momentum building to fundamentally change the system of hyper-Capitalism crushing the majority of Americans (and the rest of the world—Eds) rights now. Occupiers are never going to “instill fear” into the larger Democratic Party by allowing themselves to be co-opted by the very broken system they’ve been protesting this whole time. Seriously, try to envision what a meeting between Democrats and Occupiers would look like when protesters propose banning “big corporate donations to campaigns and [setting] equal spending limits.” I mean, holy shit, Max Baucus won’t stop screaming for days.

The main takeaway beyond all our handwringing should be an understanding that the whole reason Occupy has been such a exciting, revolutionary movement is precisely because it doesn’t ask for permission — not from city officials when members camp outside or occupy abandoned buildings, not in order to wage some of its marches, and certainly not from the Democratic Party. It doesn’t seem like the group is going to ask for permission when it breaks into foreclosed houses to reintroduce homeless families to them on Monday, either.

By the way, that “instilling fear” thing has already worked, and has GOP pollster Frank Luntz shaking in his boots. He recently advised the Republican Governor’s Association to avoid mentioning Capitalism.
_______________
36 percent of Americans have a positive image of Socialism despite decades of propaganda attempting to convince them otherwise, and some polling indicates Congress is less popular right now than Communism. The country, it seems, is ripe for change.

Atkins is right that social movements do need to instill fear into the political elite in order to have a significant impact, but that fear won’t come from Occupy asking permission to sit at the negotiation table. That change will come following mass acts of civil disobedience – by disrupting the flow of normalcy until the movement can no longer be ignored. Eventually, if negotiations do occur, Washington will have to learn how to work with Occupy, a leaderless movement that votes on everything democratically, which can oftentimes be a painfully slow process. But that is the very nature of Occupy. Anything other than that process won’t be OWS, but rather a co-opted mutant breed masquerading as the revolutionary force.

¶

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Global Rebellion: The Coming Chaos?

Al Jazeera—

Global elites are confused, reactive, and sinking into a quagmire of their own making, says author.
The ruling classes have lost legitimacy; we are witnessing a breakdown of ruling-class hegemony on a world scale.

by William I. Robinson

SANTA BARBARA, CA –
As the crisis of global capitalism spirals out of control, the powers that be in the global system appear to be adrift and unable to propose viable solutions. From the slaughter of dozens of young protesters by the army in Egypt to the brutal repression of the Occupy movement in the United States, and the water cannons brandished by the militarized police in Chile against students and workers, states and ruling classes are unable to hold back the tide of worldwide popular rebellion and must resort to ever more generalized repression.

Simply put, the immense structural inequalities of the global political economy can no longer be contained through consensual mechanisms of social control. The ruling classes have lost legitimacy; we are witnessing a breakdown of ruling-class hegemony on a world scale.

To understand what is happening in this second decade of the new century we need to see the big picture in historic and structural context. Global elites had hoped and expected that the “Great Depression” that began with the mortgage crisis and the collapse of the global financial system in 2008 would be a cyclical downturn that could be resolved through state-sponsored bailouts and stimulus packages. But it has become clear that this is a structural crisis. Cyclical crises are on-going episodes in the capitalist system, occurring and about once a decade and usually last 18 months to two years. There were world recessions in the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and the early 21st century.

Structural crises are deeper; their resolution requires a fundamental restructuring of the system. Earlier world structural crises of the 1890s, the 1930s and the 1970s were resolved through a reorganization of the system that produced new models of capitalism. “Resolved” does not mean that the problems faced by a majority of humanity under capitalism were resolved but that the reorganization of the capitalist system in each case overcame the constraints to a resumption of capital accumulation on a world scale. The crisis of the 1890s was resolved in the cores of world capitalism through the export of capital and a new round of imperialist expansion. The Great Depression of the 1930s was resolved through the turn to variants of social democracy in both the North and the South – welfare, populist, or developmentalist capitalism that involved redistribution, the creation of public sectors, and state regulation of the market.

Globalization and the current structural crisis

To understand the current conjuncture we need to go back to the 1970s. The globalization stage of world capitalism we are now in itself evolved out the response of distinct agents to these previous episodes of crisis, in particular, to the 1970s crisis of social democracy, or more technically stated, of Fordism-Keynesianism, or of redistributive capitalism. In the wake of that crisis capital went global as a strategy of the emergent Transnational Capitalist Class and its political representatives to reconstitute its class power by breaking free of nation-state constraints to accumulation. These constraints – the so-called “class compromise” – had been imposed on capital through decades of mass struggles around the world by nationally-contained popular and working classes. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, globally-oriented elites captured state power in most countries around the world and utilized that power to push capitalist globalization through the neo-liberal model.

Globalization and neo-liberal policies opened up vast new opportunities for transnational accumulation in the 1980s and 1990s. The revolution in computer and information technology and other technological advances helped emergent transnational capital to achieve major gains in productivity and to restructure, “flexibilize,” and shed labor worldwide. This, in turn, undercut wages and the social wage and facilitated a transfer of income to capital and to high consumption sectors around the world that provided new market segments fueling growth. In sum, globalization made possible a major extensive and intensive expansion of the system and unleashed a frenzied new round of accumulation worldwide that offset the 1970s crisis of declining profits and investment opportunities.

However, the neo-liberal model has also resulted in an unprecedented worldwide social polarization. Fierce social and class struggles worldwide were able in the 20th century to impose a measure of social control over capital. Popular classes, to varying degrees, were able to force the system to link what we call social reproduction to capital accumulation. What has taken place through globalization is the severing of the logic of accumulation from that of social reproduction, resulting in an unprecedented growth of social inequality and intensified crises of survival for billions of people around the world.

The pauperizing effects unleashed by globalization have generated social conflicts and political crises that the system is now finding it more and more difficult to contain. The slogan “we are the 99 per cent” grows out of the reality that global inequalities and pauperization have intensified enormously since capitalist globalization took off in the 1980s. Broad swaths of humanity have experienced absolute downward mobility in recent decades. Even the IMF was forced to admit in a 2000 report that “in recent decades, nearly one-fifth of the world’s population has regressed. This is arguably one of the greatest economic failures of the 20th century”.

Global social polarization intensifies the chronic problem of over-accumulation. This refers to the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, so that the global market is unable to absorb world output and the system stagnates. [Underconsumption—Eds] Transnational capitalists find it more and more difficult to unload their bloated and expanding mass of surplus – they can’t find outlets to invest their money in order to generate new profits; hence the system enters into recession or worse. In recent years, the Transnational Capitalist Class has turned to militarized accumulation, to wild financial speculation, and to the raiding or sacking of public finance to sustain profit-making in the face of over-accumulation.

While transnational capital’s offensive against the global working and popular classes dates back to the crisis of the 1970s and has grown in intensity ever since, the Great Recession of 2008 was in several respects a major turning point. In particular, as the crisis spread it generated the conditions for new rounds of brutal austerity worldwide, greater flexibilization of labor, steeply rising under- and un-employment, and so on. Transnational finance capital and its political agents utilized the global crisis to impose brutal austerity while attempting to dismantle what is left of welfare systems and social states in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, to squeeze more value out of labor, directly through more intensified exploitation and indirectly through state finances. Social and political conflict has escalated around the world in the wake of 2008.

Nonetheless, the system has been unable to recover; it is sinking deeper into chaos. Global elites cannot manage the explosive contradictions. Is the neo-liberal model of capitalism entering a terminal stage? It is crucial to understand that neo-liberalism is but one model of global capitalism; to say that neo-liberalism may be in terminal crisis is not to say that global capitalism is in terminal crisis. Is it possible that the system will respond to crisis and mass rebellion through a new restructuring that leads to some different model of world capitalism – perhaps a global Keynesianism involving transnational redistribution and transnational regulation of finance capital? [The most critical question now:] Will rebellious forces from below be co-opted into some new reformed capitalist order?

Or are we headed towards a systemic crisis? A systemic crisis is one in which the solution involves the end of the system itself, either through its super-session and the creation of an entirely new system, or more ominously the collapse of the system. Whether or not a structural crisis becomes systemic depends on how distinct social and class forces respond – to the political projects they put forward and as well as to factors of contingency that cannot be predicted in advance, and to objective conditions. It is impossible at this time to predict the outcome of the crisis. However, a few things are clear in the current world conjuncture.

The current moment

First, this crisis shares a number of aspects with earlier structural crises of the 1930s and the 1970s, but there are also several features unique to the present:

The system is fast reaching the ecological limits of its reproduction. We face the real specter of resource depletion and environmental catastrophes that threaten a system collapse.

The magnitude of the means of violence and social control is unprecedented. Computerized wars, drones, bunker-buster bombs, star wars, and so forth, have changed the face of warfare. Warfare has become normalized and sanitized for those not directly at the receiving end of armed aggression. Also unprecedented is the concentration of control over the mass media, the production of symbols, images and messages in the hands of transnational capital. We have arrived at the society of panoptical surveillance and Orwellian thought control.

We are reaching the limits to the extensive expansion of capitalism, in the sense that there are no longer any new territories of significance that can be integrated into world capitalism. De-ruralization is now well-advanced, and the commodification of the countryside and of pre- and non-capitalist spaces has intensified, that is, converted in hot-house fashion into spaces of capital, so that intensive expansion is reaching depths never before seen. Like riding a bicycle, the capitalist system needs to continuously expand or else it collapses. Where can the system now expand?

There is the rise of a vast surplus population inhabiting a planet of slums, alienated from the productive economy, thrown into the margins, and subject to sophisticated systems of social control and to crises of survival – to a mortal cycle of dispossession-exploitation-exclusion. This raises in new ways the dangers of a 21st-century fascism and new episodes of genocide to contain the mass of surplus humanity and their real or potential rebellion.

There is a disjuncture between a globalizing economy and a nation-state based system of political authority. Transnational state apparatuses are incipient and have not been able to play the role of what social scientists refer to as a “hegemon”, or a leading nation-state that has enough power and authority to organize and stabilize the system. Nation-states cannot control the howling gales of a runaway global economy; states face expanding crises of political legitimacy.

Second, global elites are unable to come up with solutions. They appear to be politically bankrupt and impotent to steer the course of events unfolding before them. They have exhibited bickering and division at the G-8, G-20 and other forums, seemingly paralyzed, and certainly unwilling to challenge the power and prerogative of transnational finance capital, the hegemonic fraction of capital on a world scale, and the most rapacious and destabilizing fraction. While national and transnational state apparatuses fail to intervene to impose regulations on global finance capital, they have intervened to impose the costs of the crisis on labor. The budgetary and fiscal crises that supposedly justify spending cuts and austerity are contrived. They are a consequence of the unwillingness or inability of states to challenge capital and their disposition to transfer the burden of the crisis to working and popular classes.

Third, there will be no quick outcome of the mounting global chaos. We are in for a period of major conflicts and great upheavals. As I mentioned above, one danger is a neo-fascist response to contain the crisis. We are facing a war of capital against all. Three sectors of transnational capital in particular stand out as the most aggressive and prone to seek neo-fascist political arrangements to force forward accumulation as this crisis continues: speculative financial capital, the military-industrial-security complex, and the extractive and energy sector. Capital accumulation in the military-industrial-security complex depends on endless conflicts and war, including the so-called wars on terrorism and on drugs, as well as on the militarization of social control. Transnational finance capital depends on taking control of state finances and imposing debt and austerity on the masses, which in turn can only be achieved through escalating repression. And extractive industries depend on new rounds of violent dispossession and environmental degradation around the world.

Fourth, popular forces worldwide have moved quicker than anyone could imagine from the defensive to the offensive. The initiative clearly passed this year, 2011, from the transnational elite to popular forces from below. The juggernaut of capitalist globalization in the 1980s and 1990s had reverted the correlation of social and class forces worldwide in favor of transnational capital. Although resistance continued around the world, popular forces from below found themselves disoriented and fragmented in those decades, pushed on to the defensive in the heyday of neo-liberalism. Then the events of September 11, 2001, allowed the transnational elite, under the leadership of the US state, to sustain its offensive by militarizing world politics and extending systems of repressive social control in the name of “combating terrorism”.

Now all this has changed. The global revolt underway has shifted the whole political landscape and the terms of the discourse. Global elites are confused, reactive, and sinking into the quagmire of their own making. It is noteworthy that those struggling around the world have been shown a strong sense of solidarity and are in communications across whole continents. Just as the Egyptian uprising inspired the US Occupy movement, the latter has been an inspiration for a new round of mass struggle in Egypt. What remains is to extend transnational coordination and move towards transnationally-coordinated programs. On the other hand, the “empire of global capital” is definitely not a “paper tiger”. As global elites regroup and assess the new conjuncture and the threat of mass global revolution, they will – and have already begun to – organize coordinated mass repression, new wars and interventions, and mechanisms and projects of co-optation in their efforts to restore hegemony.

In my view, the only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism is a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward towards the poor majority of humanity along the lines of a 21st-century democratic socialism in which humanity is no longer at war with itself and with nature.

William I. Robinson is a Professor of Sociology, Global Studies, and Latin American Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara. His latest book is Latin America and Global Capitalism.

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American Enterprise Institute Admits The Problem With Iran Is Not That It Would Use Nukes

Political Correction (Media Matters Action Network)—

The admission that the problem with a nuclear Iran is not that it would attack Israel but that it would alter the regional balance of power is incredibly significant.

MJ Rosenberg

Suddenly the struggle to stop Iran is not about saving Israel from nuclear annihilation. After a decade of scare-mongering about the second coming of Nazi Germany, the Iran hawks are admitting that they have other reasons for wanting to take out Iran, and saving Israeli lives may not be one of them. Suddenly the neoconservatives have discovered the concept of truth-telling, although, no doubt, the shift will be ephemeral.

The shift in the rationale for war was kicked off this week when Danielle Pletka, head of the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) foreign policy shop and one of the most prominent neoconservatives in Washington, explained what the current obsession with Iran’s nuclear program is all about.

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately.” … And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem.

Watch:

Hold on. The “biggest problem” with Iran getting a nuclear weapon is not that Iranians will use it but that they won’t use it and that they might behave like a “responsible power”? But what about the hysteria about a second Holocaust? What about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assertion that this is 1938 and Hitler is on the march? What about all of these pronouncements that Iran must be prevented from developing a nuclear weapons because the apocalyptic mullahs would happily commit national suicide in order to destroy Israel? And what about AIPAC and its satellites, which produce one sanctions bill after another (all dutifully passed by Congress) because of the “existential threat” that Iran poses to Israel? Did Pletka lose her talking points?

Apparently not.

Pletka’s “never mind” about the imminent danger of an Iranian bomb seems to be the new line from the bastion of neoconservativism.

Earlier this week, one of Pletka’s colleagues at AEI said pretty much the same thing. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Thomas Donnelly explained that we’ve got the Iran problem all wrong and that we need to “understand the nature of the conflict.” He continued:

We’re fixated on the Iranian nuclear program while the Tehran regime has its eyes on the real prize: the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East.

This admission that the problem with a nuclear Iran is not that it would attack Israel but that it would alter the regional balance of power is incredibly significant. The American Enterprise Institute is not Commentary, the Republican Jewish Coalition, or the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which are not exactly known for their intellectual heft.

It is, along with the Heritage Foundation, the most influential conservative think tank. That is why it was able to play such an influential role in promoting the invasion of Iraq. Take a look at this page from the AEI website from January 2002 (featuring, no surprise, a head shot of Richard Perle). It is announcing one of an almost endless series of events designed to instigate war with Iraq, a war that did not begin for another 14 months. (Perle himself famously began promoting a war with Iraq within days of 9/11, according to former CIA director George Tenet.) AEI’s drumbeat for war was incessant, finally meeting with success in March 2003.

And now they are doing it again. On Monday, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) — AIPAC’s favorite senator — will keynote an event at AEI, with Pletka and Donnelly offering responses. It will be moderated by Fred Kagan, another AEI fellow and Iraq (now Iran) war hawk. The event is built on the premise that “ongoing efforts to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons have failed.”

We all know what that means. AEI will, no doubt, continue to host these “it’s time for war” events through 2012 and beyond, or until President Obama or his successor announces either that the United States has attacked Iran or that Israel has attacked and we are at her side.

If you didn’t know any better, you might ask why — given that Pletka and Donnelly are downgrading the Iranian nuclear threat — AEI is still hell-bent on war. If its determination to stop Iran is not about defending Israel from an “existential threat,” what is it truly about?

Fortunately, Pletka and Donnelly don’t leave us guessing. It is about preserving the regional balance of power, which means ensuring that Israel remains the region’s military powerhouse, with Saudi Arabia playing a supporting role. That requires overthrowing the Iranian regime and replacing it with one that will do our bidding (like the Shah) and will not, in any way, prevent Israel from operating with a free reign throughout the region.

This goal can only be achieved through outside intervention (war) because virtually the entire Iranian population — from the hardliners in the reactionary regime to reformists in the Green Movement working for a more open society — are united in support of Iran’s right to develop its nuclear potential and to be free of outside interference. What the neoconservatives want is a pliant government in Tehran, just like we used to have, and the only way to achieve this, they believe, is through war.

At this point, it appears that they may get their wish. The only alternative to war is diplomacy, and diplomacy, unlike war, seems to be no longer on the table.

At a fascinating Israel Policy Forum (IPF) symposium this week, Barbara Slavin, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a longtime journalist and author who specializes on Iran, noted that the Obama administration has spent a grand total of 45 minutes in direct engagement with the Iranians. Forty-five minutes! Just as bad, the administration no longer makes any effort to engage.

This is crazy. Of course, there is no way of knowing if the Iranian regime wants to talk, but what is the harm of trying? If they say no, they say no. If we talk and the talks go nowhere, then at least we tried. But we won’t try out of fear of antagonizing campaign donors who have been told that the alternative to war is the destruction of Israel. (Thanks to those same donors, Congress is utterly hopeless on this issue.)

So, instead of pursuing diplomacy, we are inching closer toward war.

At IPF, Slavin predicted what the collateral results of an attack on Iran would be:

What’s the collateral damage? Oh my lord. Well, you destroy the reform movement in Iran for another generation because people will rally around the government; inevitably they do when country is attacked.

People always talk about the Iranians being so irrational and wanting martyrdom. That’s bull. They’re perfectly happy to fight to the last Arab suicide bomber. But they don’t put their own lives on the line unless their country is attacked.

So, you know, they would rally around the government and that would destroy the reform movement. And of course the price of oil would spike. The Iranians will find ways to retaliate through their partners like Hezbollah and Hamas. I think the Israelis would have to attack Lebanon first, to take out Hezbollah’s 40,000 rockets. It’s not just a matter of a quick few hops over Saudi Arabia and you hit Natanz, you know, and a few other places.

That’s why the Israelis want the United States to do it, because they can’t do it, frankly. U.S. does it? Okay, the remaining U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are sitting ducks. Iran is already playing footsie with the Taliban in Afghanistan. That will become much more pronounced. They will perhaps attack the Saudi oil fields.

Slavin continues, but the point is clear. An Iran war would make the Iraq war look like the “cake walk” neoconservatives promised it would be.

And for what? To preserve the regional balance of power? How many American lives is that worth? Or Israeli lives? Or Iranian? (It is worth noting that this week, Max Boot, the Council on Foreign Relations’ main neocon, wrote that an attack on Iran, which he advocates, would only delay development of an Iranian bomb.)

Nonetheless, at this point war looks likely. Under our political system, the side that can pay for election campaigns invariably gets what it wants. There is, simply put, no group of donors who are supporting candidates for president and Congress based on their opposition to war, while millions of organized dollars are available to those who support the neocon agenda. Pundits used to say: As Maine goes, so goes the country. It’s just as simple today: As the money goes, so goes our policy.

http://politicalcorrection.org/fpmatters/201112020008

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