This diary developed out of a conversation with Halcyon in my previous diary, "Death to Democracy – The Neoliberal Agenda in Iraq." Specifically, Halcyon asked if the North American Unionization polices were an effort to force tyranny and oligarchy upon the US. Halcyon also questioned the logic of the Republican responses to neoliberal globalization, and whether or not Bush was using his authority to expand his dictatorial powers. Halcyon went on to question how the stability of political organization of a nation state was affected by globalism, particularly forced globalism. These are my responses to Halcyon, with additions.
NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION AND TYRANNY
There already is oligarchic tyranny and neoliberalism in North America. There has been for a number of years. Since at least the days of the Carter administration neoliberalism has been an ideological force in the rationale of US foreign and domestic policy. It has been the same for Great Britain since at least the reign of Margaret Thatcher.
Building economic unions is part of the logic of neoliberal globalism. Economic integration occurs in several stages, ordered based on the level of integration from least to most: free trade area (e.g. NAFTA), customs union, common market, economic union, and finally full political union.
With an economic union, regional signatories just remove all trade barriers to the free flow of products and factors of production. The parties entering into the economic union treaty also adopt a common currency, collective tax rates, and shared trade policy to entities external to the treaty.
The common market currency does serve to eliminate the complications and volatility of foreign exchange rates, but it does leave national unable to conduct their own monetary policy. And, unfortunately when it comes to monetary policy what is good for the gander is not always good for the goose. Furthermore, the universal policy towards non-members can conflict with individual nations’ national security objectives. All of these issues contribute to concerns about national sovereignty, which amounts to a negative psychic effect on the citizens of the republics which are signatories. It is purely speculation on my part, but perhaps these effects are intended as part of larger social control mechanisms.
Regional trading blocks are not a not an end in themselves, however. Regional trading blocks are a means to an end. They are simply the building blocks of world trade unity.
The idea behind this, at least the economic justification, is that these institutions promote free trade based on comparative advantage. But only a marginal portion of free trade is truly based on comparative advantage.
What one must understand about so-called free trade is that it is really just free investment or better yet free exploitation of exogenous resources. The cross-border operations of an enterprise are considered free trade, but the trade is not external to the company and is not truly trade, simply expanded operations.
But with all that said, remember economic integration occurs regardless of the legal framework. Economic integration was already occurring when CUSTA & NAFTA were formalized. These treaties are just risk management strategies, creating policies to solidify trade arrangements. The NAU is just the next step in creating more sophisticated risk management strategies for regional economic integration.
THE REPUBLICAN RESPONSE TO NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION AND BUSH’S POWER GRAB
As far as the Republican strategy is concerned, some of them are racists who oppose the brown people next door cozying up in "our country" (read: the country we stole from them). Remember now that they aren't isolationists; they overwhelmingly support interventionist foreign policy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Based on that the only thing I can conclude is that they are simply racists, because they obviously don’t care about working-class Americans losing their jobs or stagnant real wages, the last decade or so of Republican dominance in Congress should demonstrate that. The Republicans have had ample opportunities to make policies to counteract all this, and they have chosen to do the opposite, quite deliberately, because their base is a sectoral subgroup of corporate America.
Also, a surprising number of them are religious fanatics who oppose what they consider to be the "New World Order," which is probably based on little better than a misinterpretation of radical Jewish apocryphal literature.
For the most part though, American politicians absolutely must be a part of the Washington Consensus about neoliberalism and "free trade." Part of that process is the free movement of factors of production, and cheap labor is a big factor of production that global corporations covet.
As far as Bush assuming dictatorial powers, there has been a plan for a long time for the head of FEMA to assume control of the government during a state of emergency. These types of plans are called continuity of operations plans (continuing government through a chain of command structure with contingency replacements for key figures). These plans are well-known, though they pass through the mainstream press as if they are something without any cause for alarm.
Bush has altered the plan using presidential directives, namely NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51 and HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20 which give him the prerogative to define a "Catastrophic Emergency" and to assume control of the government. The significant portions of the text as far as our area of concern here read as follows:
"The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. In order to advise and assist the President in that function, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (APHS/CT) is hereby designated as the National Continuity Coordinator. The National Continuity Coordinator, in coordination with the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA), without exercising directive authority, shall coordinate the development and implementation of continuity policy for executive departments and agencies. The Continuity Policy Coordination Committee (CPCC), chaired by a Senior Director from the Homeland Security Council staff, designated by the National Continuity Coordinator, shall be the main day-to-day forum for such policy coordination." (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html)
The alterations to this plan have, as far as I know, passed into effective law without Congressional scrutiny or judicial review. That is concerning because one can clearly see how this plan allows for a remarkable conflict of interest and potentially insidious influence.
Veteran journalist Jerome Corsi wrote a critical review of this titled "Bush Makes a Power Grab" (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55824). Corsi correctly notes that Bush simply gave himself the broad authority to declare a national emergency (which is loosely defined, at best) and assume control of all government functions and private sector activities. This is far from a conservative response, but Republicans aren’t conservatives, they are radical right-wing statists with quasi-fascist designs.
Perhaps Corsi’s most significant observations are that,
The directive issued May 9 makes no attempt to reconcile the powers created there for the National Continuity Coordinator with the National Emergency Act. As specified by U.S. Code Title 50, Chapter 34, Subchapter II, Section 1621, the National Emergency Act allows that the president may declare a national emergency but requires that such proclamation ‘shall immediately be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register.’ A Congressional Research Service study notes that under the National Emergency Act, the president "may seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens.’
The CRS study notes that the National Emergency Act sets up congress as a balance empowered to "modify, rescind, or render dormant such delegated emergency authority," if Congress believes the president has acted inappropriately. NSPD-51/ HSPD-20 appears to supersede the National Emergency Act by creating the new position of National Continuity Coordinator without any specific act of Congress authorizing the position.
NSPD-51/ HSPD-20 also makes no reference whatsoever to Congress. The language of the May 9 directive appears to negate any a requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists, suggesting instead that the powers of the executive order can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.
INTERFERENCE WITH NATIONAL STABILITY
As an example of the lack of concern for the effects on national stability neoliberal policies, let’s look at the impact of NAFTA on Mexico. NAFTA had a very small impact on the economies of the US and Canada, as expected. But it had a monumental impact on Mexico.
Trade between countries of relatively similar levels of income and prosperity is healthy" however the free trade bills such as NAFTA that are pushed Congress are really designed to allow US corporations to operate as cheaply as possible. These investor’s rights agreements aren’t designed with even a consideration of the effects on a place like Mexico, whose economy was only about five percent the size of the United States’ economy.
The collapse of trade rights exposed the Mexican firms to competition from far more efficient and capital heavy US firms. This led to a monstrous impact on high-skilled Mexican jobs, whose functions were outsourced to the US. Mexico’s economy became "dominated by U.S. firms that (did) not really contribute to Mexico’s economic growth, but instead (just) used Mexico as a low-cost assembly site, while keeping their high-paying, high-skilled jobs north of the border" (Hill, Charles W.L.; Global Business Today, 292).
This effectively destroyed the economy of northern Mexico, and contributed greatly to the immigration crisis because impoverished Mexicans had to flee to the US. Perhaps this was exactly what NAFTA was intended to do. This amounts to little more that economic Darwinism.
Nation-states are basically irrelevant in the calculus of neoliberalism. After the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970’s, the world’s managed floating exchange rate system emerged. Along with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system came the emergence of the WTO as an entity designed to reduce capital controls and restrictions that it calls "trade barriers." This means that governments, through central banking systems like the Federal Reserve, can no longer control their nation's economic stability. Private investors are free to trade currency like any other equity, and they can also monopolize the securities through free market trading.
This gives them to power to basically destroy a nation's economy by devaluing its currency and creating depression or hyperinflation, depending on how the Treasury would repond. So their prerogatives, and those of the corporations they represent, will dominate the public agenda. They have to or they will basically obliterate the nation economically through capital flight. So, private enterprises are the only entity that are salient in the world economy, and they have essentially absolute hegemony (provided that Bush doesn’t assume dictatorial control over them). People are voluntarily compliant in part because they don't realize that the national interest doesn't exist, only the interest of certain corporations.