From: Lindseyrobinson@aol.com
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 4:20 AM
To: amadei@colorado.edu
Subject: Could I publish my clip on your website?
Lindsey Robinson
303-422-2640
Engineers Without Borders

Global Ethics and the Cost of War Regarding Sustainability

Regarding ethics and globalization, the military arms race, global bankers and multinationals have fought at any expense to establish their hegemony across the world, with little regard for enlightened self interest. The recent war in Iraq dramatizes the zero sum gain to dominate strategic territory in the Middle East, and control oil supplies with little regard for innocent lives or the principles of sustainability. Wars with much greater casualties like that in the Congo get little or no public attention because their humanitarian needs don’t include strategic geo politics or natural resources.   

According to Paul Rogers, author of Losing Control, Global Security in the Twenty-First Century, he states that world business executives, political leaders, and civil society as a whole must  undertake a "fundamental rethinking of our attitudes to security (that)  is necessary, that countering socioeconomic division  and embracing sustainable development are actually core requirements for stable international security." Indeed, we must change our attitude towards international security…"so that the prevailing paradigm of a Western elite maintaining its security,  if need be by military means, is recognized as not just unsustainable but actually self-defeating…that a polarized and constrained world is not acceptable on the grounds of morality and justice". Drawing on Roger’s military expertise, "in practice it cannot and will not work. An alternative security paradigm is required."

Researchers have found that for China to achieve America’s standard of living would require three earths. "To emulate the present lifestyle and resource use of the USA, the demand on world resources would be increased approximately 15-fold," at the expense of environmental degradation and further marginalization of lesser developed nations. Rogers argues the current world economy is predominately a "unimodal liberal market system." During and since the Cold War this market system has disproportionately accelerated economic wealth at the top, while unsuccessfully delivering social justice to the poor.

While the privileged few may number over one billion, the remaining four billion are becoming increasingly marginalized.  "Socioeconomic disparities are growing and extreme poverty is experienced by a substantial proportion of the world’s population."  Rogers argues that while one and two billion of the world’s population’s living standards represent a "relative middle standard of living" (clean water, food, electricity), three billion people continue to be further marginalized. With a population growth of 80 million new people being born each year, the current liberal market system reveals economic injustice is becoming exacerbated. Moreover, with the concentration of wealth and the "ascendancy of a single economic system," the  resulting structure of a public welfare provision is in rampant decline, thanks to the concentrated transfer of  international wealth over the past five decades from poor to rich.

In this race towards economic wealth, globalization has exploited international labor markets. Rogers says, "the three successive ‘drivers’ of international wealth divisions are all inextricably linked to the liberal market: trade problems, the debt crisis and labor rights". The widening gap between the North and South  continue as colonialism and extraction of "primary commodities including copper, tin, bauxite, or coffee" has encouraged  "inefficient import substitution" that lack incentives for increased technological innovation, and technology transfer.

Gimmicks like agricultural or manufacturing government subsidies and corporate welfare/sweetheart deals/tax breaks, partial assembly, price transfer and cross subsidization have created a "we can’t win" predicament for third world countries whose currencies have repeatedly been devalued where the cost for example, in Tanzania to buy  a tractor in 1963 required producing 5 tons of sisal, where by 1970, local businesses had to produce 10 tons of sisal to buy the same tractor. In fact, across much of the non-OECD countries, the living standards have actually dropped to levels below where they were in 1970. Problems like our current global recession mimic the quagmire of ‘stagflation’ reminiscent of the mid 1970s where collapsing commodity prices throughout industrialized states made up for their losses at the expense of third world countries and the "immediate loss of interest in trade reform". The New International Economic Order promoting fairer North-South trade has all but dissolved.

Income bracket amnesia. The widening rich-poor divide has continued to accelerate since the 1980s as free market capitalism increases. As we enter a new millennium, Rogers says the world now suffers endemic deep poverty affecting over one billion  people. He estimates there are approximately  "300 dollar billionaires who are collectively as wealthy as the poorest 2.4 billion people. In 1960, the richest 20 percent of the world’s people had 70 percent of the income; by 1991 their share had risen to 85 percent while the share of the poorest 20 percent had declined from 2.3 percent to 1.7 percent. Put another way, the ratio of global inequality had nearly doubled."  Moreover, since the 1980s and the acceleration of free market liberalization, the rich-poor gap is widening at an unprecedented rate.  John Cavanah, author of books like Global Dreams and When Corporations Rule the World  claims  a "new global apartheid of 24 richer countries, a dozen rapidly developing countries and 140 that are growing slowly or not at all, becoming one of the major new threats to global security."

Rogers predicts the next 30 years will represent an even greater acceleration of the trans-state global elite. The repercussions are reflected in growing terrorism and rebel organization like the Hamas and their aim to destroy the Israeli state where tens or hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been living in refugee camps along the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights for the past fifty years. A voice needs to be heard.  Consequent regional and global economic downturns and government corruption worldwide have lead to riots, civil wars and a return to a military state of emergency from Israel, to Rio De Janeiro, to Djakarta and Tanzania, to Johannesburg to Indonesia. "Threats stem from a possible revival of a belligerent Russia, or of an increasingly powerful  China, together with the activities of ‘rogue states’ and terrorists, and even of ideological or religious movements, especially militant Islam," said Rogers.  

Rogers argues the post Cold War reach of counter insurgency and missile defenses focus on strategic strikes and control from a distance represented in the low death tolls for coalition both Iraq Gulf War forces and few NATO military loss of lives in Bosnia/Kosovo, where tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Serbians were killed. Rogers gives in- depth account to the Cold War build up, sophisticated weapons, and apocalyptic advancements in warfare technology and deployment. Where the Economist has mentioned the loss of tracking many arms and weapons sales, the recorded numbers are staggering. Desmond Ball’s 1982 SIOP-5 nuclear strategy research is outdated, where he draws the point that, "US target plans for strategic nuclear warfare are now extremely comprehensive. The current version of SIOP-5 includes more than 40,000 potential target installations as compared to about 25,000 in 1974. His targets included Soviet nuclear forces (ICBMs, launch and command centers, weapons sites, submarine bases), conventional military forces (barrack/naval bases), military and political leadership (command and communication centers), and economic and industrial targets (munitions and weapons factories, transport and energy and recovery industries). Iraq went right by the book.
Even the Geneva Convention mandates of not killing heads of state was revoke in regards to Saddam Hussein.

The Economist  reported two days after the World Trade Center bombing that America  entered Iraq’s "no fly zone" and  destroyed their surface to air missile facilities. A historic account of the Kissinger years reveal a long Cold War mentality of conspiracy theories, containment, the domino theory, counter insurgencies and puppet regimes. Today we’ve become more bold to just step in ourselves in the name of democracy and Iraqi liberation in spite of the world‘s protest.

The Post Cold War has become more asymmetric, but remains mired in political and military vacuums that are member able from Cambodia, Korea, Vietnam, Rwanda, Somalia to Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and now Iraq. Some argue intervention in Afghanistan was geo political to establish back-up military bases (with unstable American relations with Saudi Arabia) in order to establish a more secure military present against China, access to the Indian Ocean (aircraft carriers) and proximity to the Red Sea. Likewise, some analysts argue the Bosnia-Kosovo war was more about gaining access to warm water ports through Macedonia and weapons trade access between Europe and Turkey to the Middle East than about religious wars and ethnic cleansing. Maybe that is why it took more than five years for UN forces to establish a new Sarajevo republic. Rumors are even that Israel blew up the World Trade Center to force America to invade Iraq and secure their dominance in the region. Kissinger conspiracy theories.

If the new security war is knocking out a foreign dictator, economic overthrow through bankrupting foreign countries (the Asian Contagion and IMF bailout), bringing down sovereign stock markets through devaluation , default and consequent capital flight, or  knocking out communication systems may represent overt threats.  A quote by a Chinese ambassador that China owns one half of America’s stock market indicates more covert means to overthrow a foreign government. America’s two Beijing policy and our war games in the Taiwan Straits and the China Sea are as much about global dollarization as protecting America’s international security. The emergence of three primary currencies of equal value, the dollar, the Euro and the Chinese dollar further are working to integrate countries where China may not have a top grade stock market, but values their currencies through trade balances, currency exchange, commodities, capital reserves, the bond market and project finance (foreign direct investment, manufacturing, cross subsidies). The Federal Reserve does not necessarily represent the best interest of America, but that of the international banking community. Same for the IMF, UN, WTO, and World Bank. It seem that Jewish bankers like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Chase Manhattan, and Citigroup pull the strings behind the democratic façade of the international organizations.  

Indeed, multinationals have become nation states into themselves, and many  transnational work as central banks. The old notion of Luxemburg Inc. or America Inc. no longer support the old axiom "What’s good for GM is good for America," but only for its stakeholders and special interest groups. The explosion in off shore accounts/tax havens like the Cayman Islands, to Switzerland to Hong Kong, to Las Vegas provinces represent not just the best casinos and tourism, but a place for multinationals to skirt taxes. Los Vegas has become synonymous for laundering money for the Federal Reserve during the Iran Contra arms  trade and regularly as has Takistan for laundering weapons, money and Afghani opium. The Afghanistan war not only established an American presence in the region, we also took control over the largest opium producing state in the world. True to form the Afghanistan wars consistently followed crop harvest. "Hotels and pharmaceuticals."  Likewise, synthetic drugs like crystal met amphetamines have represented a move to keep drug money within the US borders where the Columbian cartels like the Cali and Gambini family’s dominance selling cocaine and marijuana have historically exported dollars away from America. Indeed, the backlash of globalization and the widening gap between rich and poor is creating a spiritual crisis.  Maybe it’s time to put new morals on the walls, and new scruples in Russia’s currency in the move towards ethics and globalization.
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