re: [A-List] Full Spectrum Entropy: Wheels off...

["Mark Jones" <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Of course, all that I've just posited, with the possibility of a no-war
result which is still favourable (or can be presented as such) to Bush and
his need to save face, doesn't adequately deal with all the variables and
possible outcomes. From the point of view of the stable performance of the
capitalist world economy, in which all he capitalist states have an
interest, the 'optimum' solution I just suggested as now being also the most
probable (no war with Iraq, and Anglo-American oil interests being allowed
into the Iraqi energy sector) doesn't solve the underlying problems which
got us here in the first place. It doesn't solve the problem of growing
demand for cheap energy, especially oil, just at the moment
(historically-speaking) when energy and above all oil is likely to become
both scarce and expensive. It also doesn't do anything to address the
underlying disequilibria afflicting the world economy, evidenced by US trade
deficits, dollar indebtedness, economic weakness vis a vis rivals like China
and the EU, and the various other factors which collectively represent
adverse trends tending towards deflation, economic slowdown and perhaps a
global slump. The US will be even more militarily over-extended and behind
the facade of 'US leadership of willing allies' will be the fact that the
emperor has not many clothes, for the bitter truth is that Bush's Plan A was
foiled more by resistance from the wise men in his own military and US
ruling circles generally, who clearly saw that the imperial role being
claimed by Bush was simply unsustainable and that the US cannot rule in the
middle east or anywhere else, without the tacit support of many and the open
collusion and active participation of at least a few key allies, and that
support cannot be taken for granted. The New Rome hasn't quite happened yet.
Meanwhile, all those new bases have to be financed somehow, and what Bush
will leave has his main legacy seems likely to be a totally-wrecked system
of US public finances.

Finally, if this is how things work out in the middle east, then it is not a
sufficiently powerful springboard for US imperialism to do anything
*militarily* about China, and China is still the main strategic problem
faced by the US incoming decades.

Mark