Following the unpredicted fall of the Soviet Union US Foreign Policy doctrine shifted from an anti-communist centric foreign policy to a stability centric foreign policy. I think this happened because it would maintain U.S. ties and influence with a number of authoritarian governments, and because Corporate America wanted to take advantage of these regimes' susceptibility to bribery, their suppression of their indigenous labor movements, and these regimes' lax regulatory structures.
As the US's stability centric foreign policy is unraveling in spectacular fashion across North Africa and the Middle East, we learn that American commodity speculators have become the unlikely agents of revolution and upheaval in the region. Predatory commodity speculators in the U.S. are driving up food prices across the region, and fueling the unrest:
The hidden roots of Egypt's despair
Yes, the tens of thousands in the streets demanding the ouster of the cruel Mubarak regime are pressing for their right to make a political choice, but they are being driven by an economic disaster that have sent unemployment skyrocketing and food prices climbing.
People are out in the streets not just to meet but by their need to eat.
As Nouriel Roubini - who was among the first to predict the financial crisis while others were pooh-poohing him as "Dr Doom" - says, don't just look at the crowds in Cairo, but what is motivating them now after years of silence and repression.
He says that the dramatic rise in energy and food prices has become a major global threat and a leading factor that has gone largely unreported in the coverage of events in Egypt.
"What has happened in Tunisia is happening right now in Egypt, but also riots in Morocco, Algeria and Pakistan are related not only to high unemployment rates and to income and wealth inequality, but also to this very sharp rise in food and commodity prices," Roubini said.
For instance, prices in Egypt are up 17% because of a worldwide surge in commodity prices.
Now here's a key fact buried in a CNN Money report - the kind intended for investors, not the public at large: "About 40% of Egypt's citizens live off less than $2 a day, so any price increase hurts."
This type of food commodity speculation is a system that is designed to benefit the elites, to the detriment of of hundreds of millions of poor people across the planet. Commodity speculation is a contributing factor to increasing hunger and desperation among the world's poor. Commodity speculation has become an outmoded mechanism for generating more wealth for the already wealthy elites, and now it pushing hundreds of millions of poor people into desperation and despair.
Here's an excerpt of Chris Hedges analysis of the situation:
What Corruption and Force Have Wrought in Egypt
The only way opposition to the U.S.-backed regime of Mubarak could be expressed for the past three decades was through Islamic movements, from the Muslim Brotherhood to more radical Islamic groups, some of which embrace violence. And any replacement of Mubarak (which now seems almost certain) while it may initially be dominated by moderate, secular leaders will, once elections are held and popular will is expressed, have an Islamic coloring. A new government, to maintain credibility with the Egyptian population, will have to more actively defy demands from Washington and be more openly antagonistic to Israel. What is happening in Egypt, like what happened in Tunisia, tightens the noose that will -- unless Israel and Washington radically change their policies toward the Palestinians and the Muslim world -- threaten to strangle the Jewish state as well as dramatically curtail American influence in the Middle East.
The failure of the United States to halt the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel has consequences. The failure to acknowledge the collective humiliation and anger felt by most Arabs because of the presence of U.S. troops on Muslim soil, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but in the staging bases set up in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, has consequences. The failure to denounce the repression, including the widespread use of torture, censorship and rigged elections, wielded by our allies against their citizens in the Middle East has consequences. We are soaked with the stench of these regimes. Mubarak, who reportedly is suffering from cancer, is seen as our puppet, a man who betrayed his own people and the Palestinians for money and power.
The Muslim world does not see us as we see ourselves. Muslims are aware, while we are not, that we have murdered tens of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have terrorized families, villages and nations. We enable and defend the Israeli war crimes carried out against Palestinians and the Lebanese--indeed we give the Israelis the weapons and military aid to carry out the slaughter. We dismiss the thousands of dead as "collateral damage." And when those who are fighting against occupation kill us or Israelis we condemn them, regardless of context, as terrorists.
Hedges unvarnished picture of U.S. actions isn't widely embraced here, but he is accurate in his analysis, and we need to realize that much of the world sees us that way too.
This comes from another Al Jazeera OpEd:
The triviality of US Mideast policy
Instead it is that, like my old unfortunate headmaster, the US's entire frame of reference in the region is hopelessly outdated, and no longer has meaning: As if the street protesters in Tunis and Cairo could possibly care what the US thinks or says; as if the political and economic reform which president Obama stubbornly urges on Mubarak while Cairo burns could possibly satisfy those risking their lives to overcome nearly three decades of his repression; as if the two-state solution in Palestine for which the US has so thoroughly compromised itself, and for whose support the US administration still praises Mubarak, has even the slightest hope of realisation; as if the exercise in brutal and demeaning collective punishment inflicted upon Gaza, and for whose enforcement the US, again, still credits Mubarak could possibly produce a decent or just outcome; as if the US refusal to deal with Hezbollah as anything but a terrorist organisation bore any relation to current political realities in the Levant.
Machiavelli once wrote that princes should see to it that they are either respected or feared; what they must avoid at all cost is to be despised. To have made itself despised as irrelevant: That is the legacy of US faithlessness and wilful blindness in the Middle East.
Ever since the Iranian Revolution toppled the Shaw as America's third pillar, the two pillars of U.S. Middle East Policy have been Israel and Saudi Arabia. U.S. policy in places like Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen, have all been subordinated to the US's unconditional support for the current leaderships of Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Domestically this stability centric foreign policy has resulted in most of America's manufacturing sector existing the country, with much of it going to authoritarian regimes that suppress organized labor by force and/or with legal prohibitions.
How can Americans be outraged by Egyptian Authorities cutting off Al Jazeera, when corporate American Authorities took it apron themselves to bar Al Jazeera from viewers in the Unties States over the last 4 years.
NaomiAKlein@Twitter
@jeffjarvis If Egyptians can demand freedom from dictatorship surely Americans can demand Al Jazeera from their cable providers
Business Insider
Cable companies: Add Al Jazeera English now
What the Gulf War was to CNN, the people’s revolutions of the Middle East are to Al Jazeera English. But in the U.S., in a sad vestige of the era of Freedom Fries, hardly anyone can watch the channel on cable TV.
When Naomi Klein and the bushiness press agree, you know ending the corporate censorship of Al Jazeera English must enjoy broad support.
Send an e-mail now to your cable of satellite provider
U.S. Foreign Policy goals desperately need a through re-examination and a top to bottom update to bring them into the 21st century.
Sign the Petition: STAND WITH THE PEOPLE OF EGYPT
