How the US may destroy Israel? - By proxy!
by Hans Vogel
The tension between national sovereignty and the forces of globalization is becoming ever more acute. The US, as the main champion of globalization, however, is at the same time the champion of the most extreme form of nationalism, namely imperialism. In fact, Israel’s worst enemy is the very nation posing as its best friend. This means that Israel’s days are numbered.
Today, the United States government champions an extreme form of national sovereignty for itself. In clear violation of its international commitments and obligations (for instance under the provisions of the WTO-treaty), the US government effectively prevents foreigners from investing in the US economy. Foreigners (Chinese) have been barred from purchasing an interest in US port activities and from taking over a US oil company. These planned takeovers were deemed a threat to US national security. Similarly, the defence and energy industries in the US have long been off-limits for foreign investors.
In 1996, the Helms-Burton Act came into effect, one of the most blatant attempts to give US laws an extraterritorial validity. Illegal from the perspective of international law, the Helms-Burton Act holds CEO’s of foreign companies personally responsible for doing business with Cuban firms owning US property nationalized in 1959. Indeed, the support for these policies is not a recent phenomenon, nor is it narrow-based. Therefore, one must assume it to be a permanent characteristic of US policy, and one that will only strengthen and be more prominent in the future.
The US implicitly denies full sovereignty to any other nation but the US. Moreover, the US regularly intimidates other nations, even its closest allies, to bring their policies in line with US interests. Thus in 2005, Israel was forced to call off military cooperation with China over US fears that the Chinese might lay their hands on sensitive high technology. The Israelis even had to sack Amos Yaron, director general of the defence ministry, who was leading the China program. In April 2006 Trevor Taylor, an influential British defense specialist, wrote that cooperation with the US is impossible since the US will not recognize any other sovereignty but its own. This attitude is practically universal among them, and at last is beginning to put even long-time alliances at risk. Interestingly enough, this latest criticism came from Britain, the closest and oldest US ally (since 1939). If the US does not even trust the British any longer, who will they trust?
The root of the problem is that the US political leadership, together with leading intellectuals and businessmen, regard their country as God’s own. Although founded in the 1770s on universalist, humanistic and even masonic values and principles, subsequent politicians have introduced religious elements. The contradictory result is visible to anyone who has ever handled a dollar bill: it carries both masonic symbols and the motto “in God we trust.”
Humanistic values have until recently been a key element of US policy, but have been jettisoned by the Bush administration since it officially uses torture as a judicial tool against perceived foreign enemies. The Obama administration shows few signs of departing from this policy. Yet the claim to embodying universalist values, which the US has sustained ever since the foundation of the republic, still has not disappeared. US (universalist) ideals and values have found their way to the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and other forms of international cooperation among sovereign states and nations.
Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, the US has been the main champion of globalization. Indeed, what other nation could be better suited to this role than precisely the US, with its universalist roots, well-founded claims to represent universalist values and universal appeal?
The benefits of globalization are spread very unevenly. There are two major beneficiaries: the US and China. Yet whereas China has behaved in a very modest fashion on the international political stage, the US has made a mockery of the very international organizations and treaties it has been so instrumental in creating. The conquest and colonization of Iraq, a sovereign state and a UN member, was carried out in sheer contempt of the UN. The US is still refusing to sign and ratify the Kyoto protocol, purporting to curtail worldwide environmental disaster. In their fight against Iraqi freedom fighters, US forces have since 2003 been violating most articles of the Geneva conventions on a daily basis.
The question is, why would the US behave in such a way? The answer is simple: the US believes it is the true international nation. They do not really need a UN, at least not when they cannot control it. The whole world is theirs, and who can really blame them for believing that? The whole world watches insipid US sitcoms and silly Hollywood cinema, everybody sips Coca Cola and other US sodas, which will end up giving you cancer in whatever form you drink them. Everybody eats McDonald’s hamburgers, which will make you sick, overweight and miserable, and cause heart failure. The whole world consumes the trash masquerading as US popular cultureand the whole world is destroying itself doing so. With people all over the world demonstrating such indifference to their own hearts, minds and stomachs, why would they care for something as alien and distant as the UN, or even their nation’s sovereignty?
