Submitted by Ben Tanosborn [20] [20]
Common Sense Likely to Silence the Drums of War
Empire-hawks have had the upper hand in American politics for several decades and, given the shifting economic power taking place in the world, they are now seemingly suicidal, ready to lead us into nuclear holocaust. Just like Jim Jones did with his followers 36 years ago in Jonestown. This time, however, the kool-aid is being dispensed by the US mainstream media laced with a different poison: raw propaganda against the Russian Federation and its malefic leader, Vladimir Putin.
The White House, acceding to the war-mongering influence that radiates from the Pentagon, the State Department and Congress, is performing a poorly-written morality play for the world to see, absurdly levying sanctions which will likely affect the leviers (US and EU) as much or more than the intended sanctioned, as Russia answers with quid pro quo economic counter-sanctions.
Washington may wish to be seen as a white knight defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity; a farce, when in the last year and a half the US has been instrumental in destabilizing that nation with regime change intended to bring the former Soviet republic to the bosom of the West. The strategy appears motivated not so much by magnanimity, to afford a greater future for a nation which is a true economic basket-case, but to close in to the borders of Russia, economically and militarily.
In a nutshell: keep the Russian bear caged and Putin’s dream of a strong and economically integrated Eurasia unrealized!
Common economic sense, however, is likely to silence the loud drums of war.
Angus Maddison, the late British macro-economist who studied/researched the history of World GDP, claimed that India and China were the biggest economies in the world for almost all of the past 2000 years. Then the industrial revolution, colonialism and the information revolution entered and changed the mix.
I am well aware of the danger in extrapolating data compiled by the World Bank for a period extending all of a decade, but my curiosity in economics and statistics has won the day. After some minor subjective geo-political considerations which I anticipate might take place in the next 5 to 10 years, I see the future composition of the World GDP by 2024 as 12 nations claiming 82 percent of the pie and the rest of the world combined accounting for the other 18 percent. The dozen major economies, with their respective rounded-off share (to the nearest half percent), would line up in this decreasing order: China, 20%; US, 15%; Russia and Brazil, each 7.5%; Japan, 6%; Germany and India, each 5%; Australia and France, each 3.5%; and Canada, Italy and Indonesia, each 3%. The United Kingdom is likely to submerge into oblivion, no matter how the Scots decide to vote, its two of-age daughters, Australia and Canada, surpassing the mother country’s GDP… in the case of Australia by as much as 25 percent.
Tempted to play with projected GDP figures, for after all it is a nation’s aggregate output that counts – and not the touted per capita figures, one might come up with an Iberian-American economic super-power (a confederation of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking nations in both the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas) that overall would be second only to China, with approximately 18 percent of the pie.
And, of course, we could also create in the same fashion a Eurasian economic block that would add Turkey, Ukraine and a few other former Soviet republics to the Russian Federation that would make geopolitical sense and combine to over 10 percent of the World GDP. Those who cannot see Turkey in league with Russia should be reminded of the great Turkish reformer, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who if alive today might find favor in allying with Putin rather than begging second rate treatment if joining the European Union, while also continuing as a member of an aggressive US-lackey NATO. An unlikely event, I know… yet, who would have said a century ago that such great statesman and secularist, Atatürk, would come out of Salonika to remake the soul of the Ottoman Empire?
Although the US seems intent in playing the drums of war, perhaps realizing that its economic power is slowly headed for oblivion, to join the likes of Japan and the UK, American firms waving international flags don’t have the appetite for war that neocon elitists in the State Department or star-studded bellicosarians in the halls of the Pentagon have. Not at all! And here is where the feared industrial-military complex hopefully falls apart as globalist firms give their overall support to peace as a preferred alternative to the specter of a nuclear holocaust. Russia doesn’t want any military confrontation, nor does China, nor do American and European corporate entities that see no future in suicide.
Americans need not drink the kool-aid offered by John McCain and his ilk in the Pentagon, Congress or the State Department; nor should they listen to the sad sack windmill-mouthpiece they have enlisted in the White House: Barack Obama.
[21]
