Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Don Quijones — Hidden Agenda Behind the new Free Trade Deals: “Everyone but China”

So, if it’s not about trade, what is the TTIP really about? As I previously reported (hereand here), one of the primary goals of 21st century trade deals like TTIP is to enshrine into law the corporate takeover of the political, cultural, economic, financial, agricultural, scientific, digital and public space, as well as remove any remaining barriers on the ability of multinational corporations to exploit the world’s resources – including, of course, its human resources. 
But that’s just part of the story, albeit a very important one. There is also a more subtle agenda at work: namely to secure Western domination of the global economy and geopolitical landscape for the foreseeable future. 
To achieve that goal, the U.S. and its allies have just one trick left up their sleeve: launching the mother of all trade wars.
…the U.S. and its “allies” have decided, it seems, to isolate China, first from its own back yard (through the TPP and, of course, the U.S. Pentagon’s “Asian Pivot”), then from the West (through the TTIP and TISA), and ultimately from the rest. In the words of Timothy Garton Ash, a British historian, and strong advocate of global “free” trade [It’s worth noting that he's also a board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations]: 
"One way of thinking about [TTIP and TPP] is to see it as the Widest West Web, though the definition of the west [as includes] Japan, Peru, Brunei and Vietnam is wide indeed. Another way to describe it is EBC: Everyone But China."
In sum, as the Dutch think tank and diplomatic academy Clingendael puts it, the new geopolitical formula would look like this: TTIP + TPP = EBC.…
Countries around the world face the same existential dilemma: either sign up to a trade deal that goes against their basic national interest, threatening to transfer what remains of their sovereignty into the hands of a Global Corporatocracy still dominated by North American and European companies (accounting for 1,135 of Fortune’s Global 2,000); or risk eternal isolation from two of the world’s biggest markets? 
For decades now, the rulers of the West, with the U.S. in the driver’s seat, have slowly, incrementally, almost imperceptibly reconfigured the global economic landscape. Not a single one of us has been consulted along the way. As the first general secretary of the World Trade Organization, Renato Ruggiero, said in 1996, “We are no longer writing the rules of interaction among separate national economies. We are writing the constitution of a single global economy”.
Wolf Street
Hidden Agenda Behind the new Free Trade Deals: “Everyone but China”
Don Quijones

See also Norman Pollack, Wesley Clark’s Paradigm of Global Hegemony at Counterpunch.
Our homespun Clausewitz, US Army General (ret.), former NATO supreme Allied commander in Europe, and author of the aptly titled, “Don’t Wait for the Next War: A Strategy for American Growth and Global Leadership,”—that is, why wait(?) when NOW is the time to confront China, our major world adversary, and claim once-for-all US unilateral dominance in an American-defined international order—Clark is indeed a formidable voice of military opinion which, judging from Obama’s Pacific-first strategy, appears to resonate throughout official Washington…
Interesting article especially from the point of view that Clark was a contender for the Democratic nomination that Obama won in 2008. He is no neocon. So one wonders what the neocons are thinking about China's rise and its implications for the American world order.

2 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Tom perhaps based on the recent courtroom revelations that Hank Paulson was talking to the Chinese about deals to help with the bailout (vice going to Pelosi at first!) the 'neo-cons' are more China friendly than these 'neo-Clintonistas'...

Clark is "Clinton's General"... so hence the GOP despises him...

This is probably a Democrat fueled intitiative... the 'neo-cons' are big free traders and probably would like to see China opened up even more than it is from a Mercantilist standpoint... "win them over thru business..." type thing... rsp,

Tom Hickey said...

The favored strategy of neocons is to provoke regime change internally. Regime change in China, Russia and Iran are high on the list.