Situation with Iraq Reflects Western Crisis

Russian macro-economy specialist says that America has its future

Nothing is new in this world. The humanity is on the edge of another large-scale war, like it happened tends, hundreds, and thousands years ago. People waged wars for so many reasons! Predatory raids, religious crusades, sea exit wars, natural resources wars, civil wars and liberating wars – the history knows them all. Their reasons have always been different, although the color of the human blood always remained the same.

Nowadays, the symbol of death can be found on the land of ancient Mesopotamia – the so-called cradle of the human civilization. Hundreds, thousands and millions of people have to face danger again. The ground is ready to turn red with blood again too. Of course, one may say that a human being is an imperfect, albeit reasonable, creature. This would be the easiest thing to do. People have always killed each other, since the moment of the very first bloodshed. This is not going to stop, until the end of time. However, the situation does not look that hopeless. At the end of the day, humans managed to refuse from eating raw meat, from bloody rituals, from slavery, as well as from a lot of other vestiges of dark ages. Probably, the human civilization has reached the point of its spiritual and cultural development, when it is ready to refuse from wars as well.

The refusal from bloody sacrifices is definitely a moot question to talk about. As a matter of fact, a war is a mass bloody sacrifice too, when a lot of innocent people are sacrificed to the Altar of Insanity for certain ideas and goals. Isn’t it time Homo Sapiens should finally come to the realization of the fact that there are no ideas or goals, for the sake of which people can be sacrificed? Isn’t it time one should stop the fratricide and start looking for other formulae of life, new cultural and philosophical doctrines that would allow to live without any bloodshed?

Let us get back to the Iraqi issue. If we cast aside things like “axis of evil” or “the struggle against the international terrorism,” we will see that it is virtually a common war for natural resources. This is the war for oil. America can be compared to a drug addict here, for it suffers from the absence of another dose, trying to reach out for the Iraqi oil as soon as possible. America shakes with its hunger for oil. So do stock indexes and quotations. However, since the majority of Americans go to churches at weekends to pray, the USA definitely can not attack Iraq without a cover of the second UN resolution. So far. There will be no restraining factors left, when the oil hunger grows unbearable.

It is possible to talk about the deep crisis of the Western system of values. Eternal values of the Western civilization – freedom, justice, brotherhood – have faded. They have been changed with other values: power, wealth, pleasures. Power is the aspiration to rule the world, while Wealth is the result of excessive consumption and saving, Pleasure is the point of an individual’s existence. New cults have been implanted in the Western culture, especially in the American one: the Cult of Consumption and the Cult of Saving.

Those phenomena obtained the most open, hypertrophied and disgusting character in the American society. American companies had to corrupt common Americans with the cult of consumption, for companies chased after the constant need to increase their sales. America became a hostage of its own nation’s growing demand. Indeed, Americans managed to establish a very strong economic system. Indeed, the United States became the richest country in the world. However, the price that the USA had to pay for it was too high: never-ending, permanent feeling of consuming hunger that is typical both for every citizen and for the whole nation.

It is time the world community should get concerned about a way to help the USA to cure it from its dependence on natural resources. Is there a way to help Americans to defeat their excessive instinct of consumption? It is not ruled out that the USA might become a complete blunderer with its up-to-date defense technologies. Today, American people have nothing to fuel their jeeps with – the government is determined to seize the Iraqi oil. Tomorrow Americans might experience the lack of metal that is used for the production of those jeeps. Who is going to become the next target to hit? In the future, America might experience the lack of other resources too – timber or gas, for example. What’s going to be next? Will the American government continue searching for terrorists in the countries that are rich with natural resources? As a matter of fact, planet Earth is not meant for Americans only, it is meant for everyone.

History proved that developed market relations cannot cast all troubles aside. America is an obvious case of the fact that one should be afraid of the usurpation of power in the hands of a small group of business oligarchs, or transcontinental corporations. It was proved that it was even worse than the concentration of power in the hands of officials. Both oligarchs and officials are capable of leading a country into a dead end. Both officials and oligarchs are dangerous to a state!

America has definitely found itself in a dead end. Suppressing the rest of the world is surely not a way out of the situation. A good diet is a way out of that. Let’s take China, for example. The population of this country is five times as large as opposed to the American population. The vast majority of Chinese people ride bicycles, not cars. However, they are so filled with optimism, they so believe in their bright future. Here is another example – India. The density of the Indian population is similar to the Chinese one. Almost every Indian citizen lives in tiny apartments, not in big mansions. Yet, there can be so much joy of living seen in the eyes of an Indian. Is it possible to say the same about common Americans? Are American people sure of tomorrow? The Buddhism ideology says: if you have everything, you are not happy, but you are happy, when you need nothing.

America is a disgrace for the Western Christian culture. Furthermore, it generates nutrition for pseudo-fighters for freedom such as Bin Laden. Such a state of things is really depressing. There is a good thing about it too: the Western community did not back up the idea of the American aggression against Iraq unanimously. Germany did not succumb to the USA’s pressure, which gives a hope to believe that the West has not lost all of its chances. There is a shot that the West will soon re-estimate its values. The West does not experience a need in permanently growing sales or stock prices. The Western community needs renewed directions of its living, especially the renewed world outlook. It is the renewed system of values, which excludes violence and wars, that will be capable of extricating the West from the spiritual devastation. The USA will be able to carry the bright light of civilization and prosperity, America has its future. If it fails to do that – it will be the beginning of the end for the States.

Russia is not supposed to keep aloof from that. It is Russia that is supposed to search for new ways of development, for Russia is known for its global and universal way of thinking. There are no doubts that the combination of the Western and European cultures is to take place in Russia. This will be the unique combination of the rationalism of the Western mind and the glory of the spiritual development of the East. This combination will demolish the insatiable altar of war. It will put the humanity on a new way of its development.

Sergey Khodnev
Macroeconomy  specialist

PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov