For Thierry Meyssan, by taking
to the streets, the French have become the first Western population to take
personal risks to oppose financial globalisation. Although they do not realise
it, and still imagine that their problems are exclusively national, their enemy
is the same force that crushed the region of the African Great Lakes and a part
of the Greater Middle East. In order to understand the project which
inextricably unites these apparently disparate events, we have to take a step
back.
The cause of Western recession
International relations experienced a profound change with the
paralysis of the Soviet Union in 1986, when the State was unable to
control the civilian nuclear incident in Tchernobyl [1], then with the revocation of the Warsaw
Pact in 1989, when the East German Communist Party [2] destroyed the Berlin Wall, and finally,
with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
At that time, the President
of the United States, George Bush Sr., decided to demobilise one million
soldiers and devote the efforts of his country to its own prosperity. He wanted
to transform US hegemony within its zone of influence, and expand it into that
of the leader of the world, the guarantor of world stability. With that, he
laid the foundations for a « New World Order », first of all in the speech he
gave side by side with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, at the Aspen
Institute (2 August 1990), then during his speech to Congress (11 September
1990), announcing operation « Desert Storm » [3].
The world of the après-Soviet
Union is one of free circulation, not only of merchandise, but also world
capital, under the unique control of the United States. In other words, the
passage from capitalism to financialisation – not the triumphant culmination of
free exchange, but an exacerbated form of colonial exploitation of the whole
world, including the West. Within the space of a quarter of a century, the
major US fortunes have multiplied many times, and the global wealth of the
world has increased considerably.
By allowing capitalism to run wild,
President Bush Sr. hoped to extend prosperity to the world. But capitalism is
not a political project, it is simply a system of logic designed for creating
profit. The logic of the US multinationals was to increase their profits by
delocalising production to China, where it is now possible, and where workers
are the lowest paid in the world.
Those who were prepared to
measure the cost of this advance for the West were few and far between. New
middle classes began to appear in the third world, and although they were, of
course, far less wealthy than those in the West, they enabled new, mainly Asian
states, to play a rôle on the world stage. But simultaneously, Western middle
classes began to disappear [4], meaning that it became impossible for the
democratic institutions they built to survive. Above all, the populations of entire
regions were to be entirely crushed, starting with those of the African Great
Lakes. This first regional war caused 6 million deaths, in Angola, Burundi,
Namibia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, and was
met with general incomprehension and indifference. The aim was to continue to
seize the natural resources of these countries, but to pay less and less for
them, which meant dealing with gangs rather than with the States who had to
feed their populations.
The
sociological transformation of the world is happening very fast and is clearly
without precedent, although we do not have the statistical tools available
today to evaluate it with precision. However, everyone can witness the increase
in power of Eurasia, (not in the Gaullist sense of « Brest to Vladivostok »,
but that of Russia and Asia without Western and Central Europe), which seeks
liberty and prosperity, while the Western powers, including the United States,
are slowly and progressively declining, limiting individual freedom and
ejecting half of their population into zones of poverty.
Today,
the percentage of imprisonment in China is four times inferior to that of the
United States, while their purchasing power is slightly higher. Objectively
therefore, with all its faults, Chine has become a freer and more prosperous
country than the United States.
This process was predictable from the beginning. Its application was
studied for a long time. So, on 1 September 1987, a US forty-year-old published
a page of counter-current publicity in the New York Times,
the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. He warned his compatriots about the rôle
that President Bush Sr. was planning to allocate to the United States – to
assume and finance out of their own pockets the responsibility for the
developing « New World Order ». People read it and laughed. The author of these
texts was real estate promoter, Donald Trump.
The application of the economic
model to international relations
One month after the attacks
of 11 September 2001, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld nominated his
friend Admiral Arthur Cebrowski as Director of the new Office of Force
Transformation. He was tasked with changing the culture of the entire US military
in order to enable it to respond to a complete change in its mission.
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There was no longer question of using US armies to defend principles or
interests, but to use them for a reorganisation of the world by dividing it
into two parts – on one side the states integrated into the globalised economy,
and on the other, the others [5]. The Pentagon would no longer fight wars in
order to steal natural resources, but to control access to those resources by
the globalised nations. A division directly inspired by the process of
globalisation which had already trashed half of the Western populations. This
time, it was half of the world’s population which was to be excluded [6].
The
reorganisation of the world began in the political zone known as the « Greater
Middle East », that is to say stretching from Afghanistan to Morocco, with the
exception of Israël, Lebanon and Jordan. This brought about the alleged
epidemic of civil wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Syria and Yemen,
which has already caused several million deaths.
Like a monster eating its own
children, the global financial system based in the United States faced its
first crisis in 2008, when the subprime bubble burst. Contrary to a
commonly-held belief, this was absolutely not a global crisis, but a Western
problem. For the first time, the NATO states experienced the first
consequences of the policy they were supporting. Yet the upper Western classes
changed nothing in their behaviour, as they witnessed with compassion the wreck
of the middle classes. The only notable modification was the adoption of the «
Volcker rule » [7], which forbade banks from profiting from
information obtained from their clients in order to speculate against their
interests. But while conflicts of interest enabled a number of crooks to get
rich fast, they are not the root of the problem, which is far more
wide-reaching.
The revolt of the Western populations
The revolt of the Western middle and
working classes against the globalised upper class began two years ago.
Aware of the Western
recession as compared with Asia, the people of the United Kingdom were the
first to attempt to save its life-style by leaving the European Union and
turning to China and the Commonwealth (referendum of 23 June 2016) [8]. Unfortunately, the leaders of the United
Kingdom were unable to conclude the agreement they hoped for with China and
experienced great difficulty in reactivating their links with the Commonwealth.
Then,
witnessing the collapse of their civil industries, a part of the United States
voted, on 8 November 2016, for the only Presidential candidate who was opposed
to the New World Order, Donald Trump. He spoke of a return to the « American
dream ». Unfortunately for his
voters, although Donald Trump began to question the rules of globalised
commerce, he had no team with him apart from his family, and was only able to
modify, but not change, the military strategy of his country. Almost all of the
general officers had adopted the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski ideology, and could no
longer imagine themselves in any other role than defenders of financial
globalisation.
Aware of the collapse of
their national industry, and certain that they would be betrayed by their upper
class, the Italians voted, on 4 March 2018, for an anti-system party composed
of the Ligue and the 5-star Movement. These parties built an alliance in order
to implement social policies. Unfortunately, they were rejected by the European
Union [9]. In France, tens of thousands of SME’s
(small and medium-sized enterprises), subcontractors of industry, had gone
bankrupt over the last ten years, but their compulsory tax deductions, already
among the highest in the world, increased by 30 % over the same period.
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Several
hundreds of thousands of French people suddenly took to the streets to
demonstrate against abusive financial measures. Unfortunately for them, the
French upper classes have been contaminated by the very idea that was rejected
by the United States, and therefore did their best to adapt their policies to
the popular revolt, but not to change its basic causes.
If we
look at each of these four countries separately, we will find four different
explanations for what is happening there. But if we analyse the situation as a
single phenomenon affecting different cultures, we will discover the same
mechanisms across the board. In these four countries, consecutive with the end
of capitalism, the middle classes disappeared more or less rapidly, and with
them the political system that they incarnated – Democracy.
So
either the Western leaders abandon the financial system they have developed and
return to the productive capitalism of the Cold War, or they will have to
invent a different organisation that no-one has so far been able imagine.
Failing that, the West, which has directed the world for five centuries, will
sink into a long period of internal chaos.
The
Syrians were the first non-globalised People capable of surviving and resisting
the destruction of Rumsfeld-Cebrowski’s infra-world. The French were the first
globalised people to rise up against the destruction of the West, even if they
are not aware that they are fighting the same unique enemy of all of humanity.
President Emmanuel Macron is not the man for the situation, not because he has
any responsibility for the system that preceded him, but because he is pure
product of that system. In response to the riots in his country, he spoke from
the G20 in Buenos-Aires, declaring that the meeting was a success in his eyes,
(which it was not), and that he intended to advance more efficiently than his
predecessors – in the wrong direction.
How to save privilege
It appears that the British
ruling class has its solution – if London in particular and the Western nations
in general are no longer capable of ruling the world, it will be necessary to
cut one’s losses and divide the world into two distinct zones. This is the
policy implemented by Obama in the final months of his presidency [10], then by Theresa May, and now by Donald
Trump, with their refusal to cooperate and their ready-made accusations, first
of all against Russia and now against China.
It
also seems that Russia and China, despite their historical rivalry, are aware
that they will never be able to ally themselves with these Westerners who have
never ceased trying to carve them up. This is the source of their project, the
« Eurasian Economic Union » – if the world must be split in two, each
participant will have to organise its own. In concrete terms, for Beijing, this
means abandoning half of its « Silk Road » project and its redeployment with
Moscow only in Greater Eurasia.
How to determine the line of
demarcation
For the West and Greater
Eurasia, it will be necessary to determine the split line as fast as possible.
For example, what side will Ukraine choose? The construction by Russia of the
Kertch bridge was aimed at separating the country, absorbing the Donbass and
the Azov Sea basin, then Odessa and Transnistria. On the contrary, the incident
at Kertch, organised by the Western powers, is aimed at enrolling all of
Ukraine into NATO before the country fractures.
Since
the ship of financial globalisation is sinking, many people are beginning to
save their personal interests without any care for others. For example this is
the source of the tension between the European Union and the United States. As
far as this game is concerned, the Zionist movement has always had a length’s
lead, which explains the mutation of Israëli strategy, which has abandoned
Syria to Russia, and turned to both the Gulf States and East Africa.
Perspectives
Taking into account what is at play
here, it is obvious that the insurrection in France is only the beginning of a
much wider process which is going to spread to other Western countries.
It would be absurd to believe that at a
time of financial globalisation, a government, whatever it might be, could
resolve the problems of its country without first of all questioning
international relations and at the same time regaining its capacity for action.
But precisely, foreign policy has been kept on the sidelines of the democratic
field since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It is both necessary and
urgent to resign from almost all of the treaties and engagements of the last
thirty years. Only the states which are able to re-affirm their sovereignty can
hope to recover.
—
[1] According to Michaïl Gorbachev, this was
the event that made possible the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet
Union in so far as it delegitimised the State.
[2] Contrary to a commonly-held belief in the
West, it was the nationalists from the East-German Communist Party (and the
Lutheran churches), and not the anti-Communists (and pro-US movements), who
broke down the symbol of Soviet domination, the Wall.
[3] The main purpose of the invasion of Iraq
was not to liberate Kuwaït, but to use this affair to build the strongest
coalition possible under US command, including the USSR.
[4] Global Inequality. A New Approach for the Age of Globalization,
Branko Milanovic, Harvard University Press, 2016.
[5] “The
US military project for the world”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation
Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 22 August 2017.
[6] It is obvious that the wars of Bush Jr. and
Obama were never intended to expand the Empire. First of all because by
definition, democracy can only come from the People, not imposed by bombs. And
then because the United States was already a plutocracy.
[7] The ex-president of the US Federal Reserve,
Paul Volcker, is on the other hand, one of the architects of global
financialisation. It is Volcker who took legal action on behalf of the UNO
against the people and entities who had helped Iraq to bypass the UN embargo
(the « oil for food » affair). Volcker is one of the principal personalities of
the Pilgrim’s Society, the trans-Atlantic club presided by Queen Elizabeth II.
As such, he became the main economic advisor to President Barack Obama, and
organised part of his cabinet.
[8] “The
new British Foreign Policy”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete
Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 4 July 2016.
[9] Replacing the European Common Market, which
was originally a system for cooperation between states, the European Union, as
defined by the Treaty of Maastricht, is a supranational
[10] “Two
separate worlds”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete
Kimberley, Al-Watan (Syria) , Voltaire Network, 8 November 2016.
French
intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace
Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in
daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last
two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.
The
articles on Voltaire Network may be freely reproduced provided the source is
cited, their integrity is respected and they are not used for commercial
purposes (license CC BY-NC-ND).
