By Chuck Kelly
The excerpt below clearly exposes the lies of conservatives who say that globalization will improve the economic conditions of third world countries""to the point where they will be supporters of our country and good customers for U.S. products.
The welfare of other countries""or of American middle- and low-income citizens""were never the objectives of globalization.
Globalization is all about corporate profits and the increasing wealth of investors""and their stooges in Washington who will do everything in their power to benefit them""no matter who is hurt in the process.
From The Wall Street Journal, February 11.
Washington's Tilt to Business
Stirs a Backlash in Indonesia
Defense of Suharto-Era Deals
Shows How Interest Groups
Can Sway Foreign Policy
JAKARTA, Indonesia""In January of 2000, Lawrence Summers, then U.S. Treasury secretary, visited Indonesia to meet its first democratically elected president and cheer its emergence from three decades of dictatorship and crony capitalism under President Suharto.
"The word must go out," Mr. Summers told a luncheon of business leaders, "that in a new Indonesia, no one is above the law." America would be a model for the emerging democracy, he said, and "the most important component of our bilateral support ... [is] the quality of the examples we are able to suggest."
On the same day, a Jakarta court dismissed a corruption lawsuit against a power project""part -owned by U.S. companies and linked to Suharto relatives""that had saddled Indonesia with high electricity costs. The American ambassador played a central role in getting the corruption case dropped.
Washington's discordant signals have left a bitter legacy here. A nation once robustly pro-American has become a bastion of anti-U.S. hostility. In 1999, 75% of Indonesians held a favorable view of the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center. In a poll last year, the figure was just 15%. It's the worst anti-Americanism here in 25 years, says Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit group that monitors global hot spots.
This shift has multiple causes, including the war in Iraq. But among them is a widely held view here that in the aftermath of the Suharto dictatorship""a time of crisis but also of promise""the U.S. threw its weight behind its business interests to the detriment of Indonesians.
While anti-U.S. sentiment in the developing world is hardly new, its upsurge here is especially untimely. Facing one of its major challenges of the era""terrorism rooted in militant Islam""America now finds limited public support in the world's largest Muslim country".
In Indonesia's case, "protecting the interests of major investors and creditors was at the center of the table in everything we did," says Edmund McWilliams, who was chief political counselor at the U.S. embassy in Jakarta from 1996 to 1999. "Concerns about stability made it to the margins. Concerns about human rights, democracy, corruption never made it onto the table at all.""
Mr. McWilliams, the U.S. political attache' in Jakarta" says he had attended meetings at the embassy where American trade officials briefed U.S. businessmen on how to avoid violating federal anticorruption law by using Indonesian partners to handle ties with local officials. "I was slack-jawed," Mr. McWilliams says".
This is the classic picture of the "ugly American" at his worst. Although the story was about Indonesia, readers of the Journal know that it is typical of what's happening world-wide""from Mexico to China to India.
Workers eventually realize that their initial improvement in living conditions was in exchange for later competition to the bottom with other workers who are even more brutalized""in order to satisfy the greed of American investors.
Bear in mind that the above excerpt is presented for purposes of critique only. Those who are interested in all the gory details of this foreign policy disaster should read the very extensive original article.
Chuck Kelly is at http://www.KellySite.net. He holds a Ph.D. in industrial communications from Purdue University, is now a retired management consultant, and author of the books, THE DESTRUCTIVE ACHEIVER, THE GREAT LIMBAUGH CON, and CLASS WAR IN AMERICA. This article is originally published at opednews.com. Copyright Chuck Kelly, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached
