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It seems somewhat pointless to respond to Slim, since he's completely ignored my last two posts (suggesting a rather novel take on the word 'rebuttal'), but I am a sucker for this stuff. So, taking Al's tag with a resounding slap, I jump in to the ring with a steaming Bradshaw glare to tackle Slim's List...
- Rapprochement with China
China has long been one of the US's most favoured trading partners, despite its abysmal human rights record. The US secretly resumed trade with China a few weeks after the Tiannamen Square massacre, for example. In 93, the US violated trade bans imposed to penalise China for its involvement in nuclear missile proliferation. This was high tech equipment, not food aid or anything like that (incidentally, this was during the ongoing US-led sanctions that have killed thousands of children in Iraq, ostensibly to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing weapons of mass destruction). Also coincidentally, the Chinese Ministry of Labour reported that 11 000 workers had died in industrial accidents in the first eight months of that year - twice as many as the previous year.
If somebody could clarify what was good about the rapprochement with China, or what it involved, or when it was, I would be grateful because I genuinely don't know what you're talking about.
- Dayton Peace Accords
In Kosovo, the US thwarted Ibrahim Rugova's non-violent Kosovo Democratic League for 10 years. At the 1995 Dayton peace conference, for example, US negotiators betrayed the League's demand for autonomy in order to reach a deal with Milosevic. By weakening this moderate movement, the US helped give rise to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a violent, ultra-nationalist group demanding total secession from a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. In the US, the KLA was classified as a "terrorist organization" as recently as February 1998. But by mid-year the US was arming, equipping and training these forces, whose tactics include: massacres of civilians; targeted assassinations of anti-secessionists, including Albanian Kosovars; forced conscription; heavy reliance on foreign mercenaries; extortion of money and property from local Albanians; and burning and looting the homes of political opponents.
- Bretton Woods and the development of the IMF, IBRD and ITO
The Bretton Woods agreements, basically, involved the partitioning of the world among the winners of WWII. The US, being in the strongest position, demanded the most. I think you're alluding to the Marshall Plan, which involved billions of dollars in US aid to rebuild Europe. Obviously, this was a good thing for the handful of nations it benefited, but it was also a strong tool of economic control; the US withheld aid, including food, from countries with strong, populist movements hostile to US economic interests. They also made extensive use of fascists and Nazis to control and terrorise those states.
The role of the IMF, consistently, provides loans to Third World countries on the condition that they cut back on social services - including essential social services like making sure people can feed themselves - and 'open' their economy to foreign investment. Frequently this involves turning the land most of the population lives on into cash crop farms for foreign export. People starve. The US supports this. Arguably, they had good intentions when they set it up - I think it's unlikely, but hey. It's still an absurd point to list in favour of the contention that the US has done a lot of good things.
- Urging peace talks between Isreal and Palestine (Alright, this one could perhaps be debated. However, just because the US backs the Isrealis does not mean it wants war. The US does make an effort for peace.)
The US actually consistently blocks moves towards peace, if those moves would in any way disadvantage Israel - by, for example, recognising a Palestinian right to statehood. Essentially, the entire rest of the world - bar the US and Israel - support UN 242, a resolution proposed by the US (among other states) in 67 to end the war. Essentially, it said that Israel should be left alone if it withdrew from the occupied territories. The US rhetorically continued to cleave to this principle until Clinton explicitly rejected it, but in practice they didn't give a shit; they effectively rejected it in 71, when Egypt seriously proposed to implement it. Since then, the US has continued to arm the Israel army, provide financial aid, etc., to consolidate the occupation. On many occasions, they have provided military aid specifically designed to target civilians, such as the provision of helicopter technology designed to make it easier to attack residential apartments (at the time of the beginning of the Al-Asqa intifada, when Israel was actively provoking Palestinians both symbolically - via Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount - and through out and out murder, killing about 18 Palestinians and injuring well over a hundred others in three days).
This is what the US calls 'the peace process'. It's a lot of things, but it's certainly not an example of anything good the US has done for world affairs. In fact, it is one of the key reasons the US is so widely and intensely hated in Arab countries.
Skipping the UN since I think it's covered in posts above...
- Now for the big one which I'm sure will be contested and detested- the spread of democracy and capitalism.
Offer a single example of the US making a substantive contribution to bringing democracy anywhere, and I will comment on it. I genuinely can't think of one. I'm probably wrong, I'd like to think I'm wrong, but nothing springs to mind.
Who's next? |
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