Over the past few centuries, Western countries embarked on a road to
material affluence at the expense of the environment and other peoples
across the globe who were subjugated, killed or left to live in poverty.
And while offering more of the same and selling unfettered capitalism
to the rest of the world, Washington as the now dominant imperial power
is doing all it can to destroy any rivals, not least Russia and China.
It alone thinks it should be the sole beneficiary in a
resource-depleting race towards a barren-wasteland finish.
Imagine every nation attempting to emulate US levels of material
consumption. Consider that US citizens constitute 5 percent of the
world’s population but consume 24 percent of global energy. Now consider
the consequences of a US-style model of ‘development’ rolled out across
the world. It would be unsustainable for the planet to have a dozen
‘Americas’. Indeed, one alone is too much. The model of ‘development’
based on endless GDP growth being sold to the world via the neoliberal
globalisation agenda is a cynical, unattainable con-trick and is leading
to environmental devastation, conflict, war and poverty.
Treasury bond imperialism and the petrodollar
The US is able to consume at such a level because the dollar serves
as the world reserve currency, which means high demand for it is
guaranteed as most international trade (especially oil) is carried out
using the dollar. US global hegemony depends on it maintaining the
dollar’s leading role.
The international monetary system that emerged near the end of the
Second World War was based on the US being the dominant economic power –
after it watched and let its rivals destroy one another – and the main
creditor nation, with institutions like the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund eventually being created to serve its interests.
Since coming off the gold standard in the early seventies, Washington
has been able to run up a huge balance of payments deficit by using the
paper dollar as security in itself and engaging in
petro-dollar recycling and treasury-bond
super-imperialism. Washington has developed a system to hitch a free ride courtesy of the rest of the world.
With its
control and manipulation of the
World Bank, IMF and WTO, the US has been able to lever the trade and
the financial system to its advantage by various means (for example,
see
this analysis
of Saudi Arabia’s oil money in relation to African debt). Washington
will not allow its global hegemony and the role of the dollar to be
challenged. Given Russia’s reemergence on the global stage and China’s
rise, we are witnessing a sense of urgency to destabilise and undermine
both countries, especially as they are now increasingly bypassing the
dollar when doing business.
US Strategic Objectives and Agribusiness
The only real alternative to avoid ecological meltdown due to the
massive consumption of the planet’s finite resources and ultimately what
appears to be an increasingly likely
nuclear conflict with
Russia (or China) is to move away from militarism and resource-gabbing
conflicts by reorganising economies so that nations live within their
environmental means.
Key to this involves a major shift away from the petro-chemical
industrial model of agriculture and food production, not only because it
leads to
bad food,
poor health and environmental degradation and is ultimately
unsustainable but
also because this model has underpinned a US resource-grabbing,
food-deficit producing foreign policy agenda for many decades.
It is essential we get off the parasitical and poisonous
chemical treadmill.
Professor Michel Chossudovsky illustrates the point with reference to Ethiopia:
“The “economic therapy” imposed under IMF-World Bank
jurisdiction is in large part responsible for triggering famine and
social devastation in Ethiopia and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa,
wreaking the peasant economy and impoverishing millions of people. With
the complicity of branches of the US government, it has also opened the
door for the appropriation of traditional seeds and landraces by US
biotech corporations, which behind the scenes have been peddling the
adoption of their own genetically modified seeds under the disguise of
emergency aid and famine relief. Moreover, under WTO rules, the
agri-biotech conglomerates can manipulate market forces to their
advantage as well as exact royalties from farmers. The WTO provides
legitimacy to the food giants to dismantle State programmes including
emergency grain stocks, seed banks, extension services and agricultural
credit, etc.), plunder peasant economies and trigger the outbreak of
periodic famines.” See here.
US agribusiness must be regarded as being part of the US financial-military-industrial complex (see
this and
this).
Agriculture and agribusiness remain integral tools for US geopolitical
objectives, and agribusiness is essential for colonising indigenous
agriculture, whether on the back of trade deals, ‘aid’ programmes, war
or indeed Washington-backed coups, as in Ukraine:
“… within two to three years, as the relevant provisions
of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU go into effect,
Monsanto’s lobbying efforts will transform the Ukrainian market into an
oligopoly consisting of American corporations.” – Oriental Review
The ‘green revolution’ was exported
courtesy of the oil-rich Rockefeller family,
and poorer nations adopted agribusiness’s petrochemical-dependent
agriculture that required loans for inputs and infrastructure
development. This was underpinned by the propaganda that these countries
would earn dollars to prosper (and repay the loans) by adopting
mono-crop, export-oriented policies. It entailed uprooting traditional
agriculture and trapping nations into a globalised system of debt
bondage, rigged trade relations and the hollowing out and destruction of
national and local economies. GMOs, the control of seeds and further
corporate-controlled inputs represent the second coming of the green
revolution.
From
Mexico to India,
we can see how traditional food production and retail sectors are being
hijacked by mainly US corporate interests and can witness the
subsequent impacts on health, food security, environments and farmers’
livelihoods. NAFTA set the framework for plunder in Mexico, the
Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture is playing a similar role in India
and various bilateral trade agreements will do it elsewhere.
In India, Monsanto and Walmart had a
major role in drawing up the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture. Monsanto now funds research in public institutions and its
presence and influence compromises what should in fact be independent decision and policy making bodies. Its has effectively been called the
modern day East India Company.
Monsanto is a driving force behind what could eventually lead to the restructuring and
subjugation of India by the US.
As alluded to earlier, the IMF and Monsanto are also working to ensure
Ukraine’s subservience to
US geopolitical aims via the capture of land and agriculture. The
capture of agriculture (and societies) by rich interests is a global
phenomenon.
Only the completely naive would believe that big agribusiness and its
backers in the US State Department have humanity’s interests at heart.
At the very least, their collective aim is profit. Beyond that and to
facilitate it, the need to secure US global hegemony is paramount.
Although the globalized hijack of food and agriculture by powerful corporations results in
poverty, dependency and food insecurity,
we are deceitfully informed that we must have more of the same if we
are to feed an increasing global population and eradicate poverty. We
are told that the solutions for feeding a projected world population of
nine billion are more technical fixes: more petrochemical-dependent
agriculture, more GMOs and more unnecessary shifting of food across the
planet. Such a ‘solution’
is bogus.
The current economic system and model of globalisation and
development serves the interests of Western oil companies and financial
institutions (including
land and
commodity speculators),
global agribusiness and the major arms companies. These interlocking,
self-serving interests have managed to institute a globalized system of
war, poverty and food insecurity
and have acted to
devastate economies.
The solution
The
Oakland Institute has
just released research showing the tremendous success of agroecology
across Africa. Instead of prioritising an inappropriate Gates-Monsanto
corporate-led petro-chemical industrial model of agriculture, priority
should be given to agroecology, as stated in numerous official reports
in the last few years, not least the
IAASTD report.
This would entail supporting and investing in highly productive (see
this data on output per country) smallholder/peasant agriculture, which is the backbone of global food production but is being
marginalised, criminalised and squeezed onto lessand less land.
People want solutions for hunger, poverty and conflict but are too
often told there is no alternative to what exists. The solution
ultimately lies in taking manipulated markets and rigged trade rules out
of farming and investing in and supporting indigenous knowledge,
agroecology, education and infrastructure, instead of inappropriately
diverting funds to
underperforming sectors.
This involves rejecting big agritech’s current agenda and resisting the
US strategy of using agriculture as a geopolitical tool. It involves
challenging the corporate takeover of agriculture, supporting
food sovereignty movements and embracing sustainable agriculture that is locally owned and rooted in the needs of communities.
On a more general level, we should also embrace what environmentalist
Barry Commoner advocated: substituting green energy for fossil and
nuclear fuels, substituting electric motors for the internal combustion
engine, substituting organic farming for the chemical variety and using
more metal, glass, wood and paper – recyclables, renewables and durables
– instead of petrochemical products.
Crucially important is moving towards a system centred on the common
ownership of land and capital to serve the public good, rather than
elite interests.
If there is to be an alternative to capitalism, endless war and
poverty, this is where it is to be found. But as A.L. Morton’s classic
text ‘
A People’s History of England’
indicates, at no point whatsoever will it be handed on a plate courtesy
of the bloodsuckers that are bleeding us all dry. We will have to
struggle for it.
Colin Todhunter is an independent writer: His website is
here
The
world of buy-back mezzanine shadow financial megadebt intratrading was
rocked to its papier maché derivative foundations last night after Janet
Yellen sidelined both QE tapering and the widely expected rate rise in favour of a new recovery tool, QB.
