Stop Me Before I Vote Again

JSP:

This is too linear. More koans please. Decoding them has made for the high points of my week.

Whoever it was that had some kind words for the Marshall Plan was at least on to some thing if not the right thing… that the US was a “benevolent hegemon” back in the day, unlike the bloodsucker we’ve come to know and love these last 25 years (note: 25 years, it was precisely when the Man from Hope occupied the White House that carping Europeans dubbed the US the tribute-taking “hyperpower”). The US was a good cop because it COULD be a good cop (2/3 of the world’s intact industrial plant and equipment, 2/3 of the world’s gold reserves, sole possession of atomic weaponry, etc.) and for the sake of defending world capitalism it HAD to be a good cop (the Red Army occupying Eastern Europe, anti-colonial liberation movements less tame than the retiring European powers or Uncle Sam wanted astir, etc.). But it’s all relative, ain’t it? Being a “benevolent hegemon” meant charitably collaborating with the most reactionary and thuggish elements in its junior partner satellites (the Sicilian mafia, fascist Japanese industrialists) to beat back red and pink threats in those domains.

Although it later came back to haunt US imperialism post-1991, European economic integration in its early days (the Coal and Steel Community, I suppose) was largely a creature of big US industrial capital, which wanted a large integrated market for the seamless operation of its overseas affiliates.

Ah, nuthin’ like preaching to the amen corner… perhaps this qualifies me for a blog of my very own. And perhaps I can channel my inner Paul Hawken and my inner James Woolsey and pen my ten-point geo-green/Progressive Policy Institute manifesto on how ramping up R&D spending on alternative fuels will lessen our energy dependence on the Middle East, cut the funding stream for radical Islamists, etc. etc. – as if the main reason why US imperialism wants armed camps and reliable clients in and around the Persian Gulf is to power its own transportation equipment (even the normally useful Michael Klare buys into this bogus discourse).

co -linear

of course u are right

the M plan
was ultimately
a make the most of europe safe for trans nats

and the present one after another
gobble gobble
of the detached pieces
of the former east bloc
shows that even if
there was a way to contain stalinism
as of now
there still is no way
to containment
trans national corporatism

gluelicker, "the US was a 'benevolent hegemon' back in the day, unlike the bloodsucker we’ve come to know and love these last 25 years..."

Weally? Try telling that to the Vietnamese, Iranians, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Filipinos, and of course, Injuns. Among others.

But, you concede: "Being a “benevolent hegemon” meant charitably collaborating with the most reactionary and thuggish elements in its junior partner satellites (the Sicilian mafia, fascist Japanese industrialists) to beat back red and pink threats in those domains." I think you're aiming for sardonic understatement here, though that indicates that you realize just how hollow the "benevolent hegemon" claim is. The "red and pink threats" to which you refer are largely nationalist threats that took on a "red and pink" tinge because the Soviet Union would at least pretend to support them, unlike the US which didn't want democracy or nationalism to get out of hand in its hegemony. (Much as the US Civil Rights Movement could be, and was, smeared as a Communist action, because the USSR had denounced American racism.)

Hegemons always claim to be benevolent. And they always -- oh, so regretfully -- claim that they have to deal with people like the Mafia, fascists, and the like because, well, look at the alternative. But our motives are good. Look at our motives, not at the dead bodies piling higher and higher.

Duncan,

You have roused me to clear my good name!

You write:

>Weally? Try telling that to the Vietnamese, Iranians, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, >Haitians, Nicaraguans, Filipinos, and of course, Injuns. Among others.

I concur 100%. I (regrettably?) used the term “benevolent” only to refer to the fact that prior to the 1970’s the US exercised global leadership in the collective interest of the world’s bourgeoisies, rather than in the narrow interest of sustaining its primacy long past its sell-by date. The thread dealt with the Marshall Plan, after all.

And despite the thousands genitally electrocuted and worse by SAVAK, 500,000 massacred in the last days of Sukarno’s Indonesia, 3 million Vietnamese War dead, Argentine generals airdropping dissenters into a watery grave, etc. etc. etc., one can reasonably make the case that once the IMF and World Bank were divested of their Cold War liberal “developmentalist” mandates (warts and all) and turned into handservants of the US Treasury and Chase Manhattan, this new silent assassin mode of US imperialism was responsible for even more misery and mortality than direct interventions, CIA-backed coups, etc. etc. etc…. I think you get my drift.

You write:

>The "red and pink threats" to which you refer are largely nationalist threats that >took on a "red and pink" tinge because the Soviet Union would at least pretend to >support them, unlike the US which didn't want democracy or nationalism to get >out of hand in its hegemony.

Again, we’re on the same page, my friend… you have obviously acquainted yourself with NSC 68.

Of course, in precisely the same geo-political context, there were certain post-colonial nationalisms (of a sort) that the US would abide… such as letting the Park dictatorship in South Korea keep out US foreign investment and centrally plan what amounted to a virtual state capitalist economy (which is not to say that the jaebul did not make out like bandits and the working class did not suffer horribly!).