Michael Hudson, a contributor to Global Research, exposes how the US dominates the world and grows its military power on the back of countries around the globe.
What is the dollar glut? “The dollar glut is a term for the accumulation of United States dollars outside of the United States, contrasted with the dollar gap that lead to the creation of the Marshall Plan following World War II. The eventual shift to a dollar glut forced the end of the gold standard in the United States and led to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system.”
“To date, countries have been as powerless to defend themselves against the fact that this compulsory financing of U.S. military spending is built into the global financial system. Neoliberal economists applaud this as “equilibrium,” as if it is part of economic nature and “free markets” rather than bare-knuckle diplomacy wielded with increasing aggressiveness by U.S. officials. The mass media chime in, pretending that recycling the dollar glut to finance U.S. military spending is “showing their faith in U.S. economic strength” by sending “their” dollars here to “invest.” It is as if a choice is involved, not financial and diplomatic compulsion to choose merely between “Yes” (from China, reluctantly), “Yes, please” (from Japan and the European Union) and “Yes, thank you” (Britain, Georgia and Australia).”
The US has cleverly built up an economic system under the name of “capitalism” and “globalization” over the past few decades that leave countries around the globe no other option but to provide the US with huge amounts of capital to finance their interests.
“When the U.S. payments deficit pumps dollars into foreign economies, these banks are being given little option except to buy U.S. Treasury bills and bonds which the Treasury spends on financing an enormous, hostile military build-up to encircle the major dollar-recyclers China, Japan and Arab OPEC oil producers. Yet these governments are forced to recycle dollar inflows in a way that funds U.S. military policies in which they have no say in formulating, and which threaten them more and more belligerently. That is why China and Russia took the lead in forming the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) a few years ago.”
The world financing America’s military might and military dominance around the globe:
“the U.S. Government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars abroad not only in the Near East for direct combat, but to build enormous military bases to encircle the rest of the world, to install radar systems, guided missile systems and other forms of military coercion, including the “color revolutions” that have been funded and are still being funded all around the former Soviet Union.”
So what is there to do? How can countries stop this demonic ruling of the world? The options appear to be a catch-22:
“The implication today is that the only way a nation can block capital movements is to withdraw from the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). For the first time since the 1950s this looks like a real possibility, thanks to worldwide awareness of how the U.S. economy is glutting the global economy with surplus “paper” dollars and U.S. intransigence at stopping its free ride. From the U.S. vantage point, this is nothing less than an attempt to curtail its international military program.”
Read the full article on Global Research.
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