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"....we have 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. (It makes us) the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships (to let us) maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national society. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction....
We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism....We should (stop talking about) unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans (ideas and practices), the better."
Yet Kennan advocated diplomacy over force in contrast to Paul Nitze, Dean Atcheson and other Truman and succeeding administration officials favoring hardline militarism, future wars, and National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) policies to contain the Soviet Union. In 1962, nuclear disaster nearly resulted. The threat remains, more menacingly than ever by "forc(ing) foreign central banks to bear the costs of America's expanding military empire" through recycling their dollars into US Treasuries - something the mass media call "showing their faith in US economic strength."
Hudson refers to a "sinister dynamic," not involving consumers or private investors, but central banks putting "their money" in US Treasuries, but "it is not 'their money' at all. They are sending back the dollars that foreign exporters and other recipients turn over to their central banks for domestic currency."
"When the US payment deficit pumps dollars into foreign economies, these banks (have) little option except to buy US Treasury bills and bonds which the Treasury spends on financing an enormous, hostile military build-up to encircle (today's) major dollar-recyclers China, Japan and Arab OPEC oil producers" - essentially a process by which they finance their own endangerment.
Up to now it's continued, but, given the reckless dollar glut in recent months, with less enthusiasm by bigger buyers and hints of a possible end game or at least less buying than previously - mostly among BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and OPEC countries but other emerging economies as well getting more interdependent on themselves than on America.
In his 2002 preface, Hudson noted that "the US Treasury (pursued the same balance-of-payment) 'benign neglect' (strategy as) it did thirty years" earlier. In 1971, it "caused a global crisis when its $10 billion (level) led to a 10 per cent dollar devaluation." Now it's hundreds of billions annually and still high during the current economic crisis when exports and imports are lower.
Earlier and especially now, if Europe and Asia let the dollar deflate, their exporters will be disadvantaged at a time they can least afford it. So they're forced to "support the dollar's exchange rate by recycling their surplus dollars back to the United States" by buying US Treasuries.
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