{"id":8671,"date":"2021-01-14T23:45:11","date_gmt":"2021-01-14T23:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=150271"},"modified":"2021-01-14T23:45:11","modified_gmt":"2021-01-14T23:45:11","slug":"the-country-where-liberty-is-a-statue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/14\/the-country-where-liberty-is-a-statue\/","title":{"rendered":"The Country Where Liberty Is a Statue"},"content":{"rendered":"
On 6 January, the world witnessed an interesting spectacle, an assortment of what appeared to be characters from fantasy television shows taking possession of the US Capitol, where the legislature sits. Despite spending more than $1 trillion on its military, intelligence services, and police, the United States government found itself overrun by a horde of Donald Trump\u2019s supporters. They came without any precise programme and were not able to elicit a serious revolt around the country. What they showed clearly<\/a> is that there is a serious divide in the United States, which weakens the ability of the US elites to exercise their domination over the world.<\/p>\n Around the world, people gaped at the bizarre pageant of Trump\u2019s army running riot in the chambers of the body that calls itself the \u2018world\u2019s oldest democracy\u2019. With precision, Zimbabwe\u2019s President Emmerson Mnangagwa sent out a tweet<\/a> that tied the US economic sanctions against his country to the chaos in Washington, DC. The events at the Capitol, he wrote on 7 January, \u2018showed that the US has no moral right to punish another nation under the guise of upholding democracy. These sanctions must end\u2019. The government of Venezuela offered<\/a> its concern about the \u2018political polarisation and the spiral of violence\u2019 and explained that the United States now experiences \u2018what it has generated in other countries with its policies of aggression\u2019.<\/p>\n President Mnangagwa\u2019s use of the term \u2018moral right\u2019 has echoed across the world: how can a society that faces such a severe challenge to its own political institutions feel that it has the right to \u2018promote\u2019 democracy in other countries, using the various instruments of hybrid war?<\/p>\n The United States \u2013 like other capitalist democracies \u2013 has struggled with insurmountable challenges to its economy and society, with high rates of wealth inequality crushed by large-scale precarity and income deflation. Between 1990 and 2020, US billionaires saw their wealth<\/a> increase by 1,130%, while median wealth in the US increased by only 5.37% (this increase was even more marked during the pandemic). Exits from this social and economic crisis are simply not available to the US ruling class, which seems not to care about the great dilemmas of its own population and of the world. An example of this is the meagre income support provided during the pandemic, while the government hastens to protect the value of the wealth of the small minority that holds an obscene share of national wealth and income.<\/p>\n Rather than seek a solution to the economic and social crisis \u2013 which it cannot solve \u2013 the US ruling class projects its problem as one of political legitimacy. There is now a false sense that the main problem in the United States is posed by Donald Trump and his rag-tag army; but Trump is merely the symptom of the problem, not its cause. The constituency that he has assembled will remain intact and will continue to flourish as long as the social and economic crisis spirals further out of control. Large swathes of the US elite have rallied around Joe Biden, hoping that he \u2013 as a representative of stability \u2013 will be able to maintain order and restore the legitimacy of the United States. Their view is that the US is currently facing a crisis of political legitimacy and not a socio-economic crisis for which they have no answers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The January dossier<\/a> from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Twilight: The Erosion of US Control and the Multipolar Future,<\/em> broaches the question of the decline of US authority. Since the US war on Iraq (2003) and the credit crisis (2010), there has been the anticipation of the decline of the power of the United States and its project. At the same time, the United States continues to exert immense power through its military superiority, its control over large sections of the financial and trade system (the Dollar-Wall Street Complex), and its command over information networks. Since the late 1940s, the United States has declared that anything \u2018less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat\u2019. This political aim has been repeated in each National Security Strategy of the United States government. The socio-economic crisis over the past two decades has weakened US authority, but it has not eroded US power. This is why our dossier is titled Twilight<\/em>: we are in the midst of a process of the whittling down of US authority, but not of the loss of US power.<\/p>\n During the last two decades, China has developed its scientific and technological prowess, which has resulted in rapid advances for China\u2019s development. Over the past few years, Chinese scientists have published more peer-reviewed papers than scientists from elsewhere and Chinese scientists and firms have registered more patents than scientists and firms from elsewhere. As a consequence of these intellectual developments, China\u2019s firms have made key technological breakthroughs, such as in solar power, robotics, and telecommunications. A high savings rate by the population has enabled the Chinese state and private Chinese capital to make considerable investments in manufacturing; this has propelled China\u2019s high-tech industries, which have seriously threatened Silicon Valley firms. It is this challenge, we argue in this dossier, that has provoked the US ruling class to instigate a dangerous confrontation against China; Obama\u2019s \u2018pivot to Asia\u2019 and Trump\u2019s \u2018trade war<\/a>\u2019 have both had a military component, which includes the deployment of tactical nuclear warheads into the waters around Asia.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rather than tackle the great social and economic challenges within the US, its ruling class has taken refuge in anti-Chinese rhetoric. Why is the employment situation so bad in the United States, the people ask? Because of China, say the elites \u2013 whether those who support Trump or those who look back nostalgically to Obama. Why did COVID-19 create such havoc in the United States, which continues to have the highest death toll in the world? Because of China, says Trump. Biden, in a softer way, makes similar noises. The general orientation of the US ruling class is to blame China for every problem within the United States, to make China\u2019s rise the excuse for any failure in the United States.<\/p>\n Trump used the Obama-era Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) against China, while Biden promises to build a wider \u2018coalition of democracies\u2019 (the Quad plus Europe) against China. Regardless of which fragment of the US ruling class governs the country, these leaders will seek to shift all responsibility for their failures onto China. This is a cynical and dangerous strategy because \u2013 as we point out in the dossier \u2013 the US elites well know that China\u2019s economic development poses a serious challenge to the US, but that China does not have any military or any significant political ambitions to dominate the world. The US ruling class, however, is willing to risk a cataclysmic war to protect its preponderant power.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1972, when the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile came under murderous pressure from the United States, the poet Nicanor Parra wrote:<\/p>\n United States: the country where\n
liberty is a statue.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n