When Business first foreign policy made us less secure: after fall of Soviet Union

[yurbud]

This probably occurred to someone else long ago, but I just realized our corporate profit above all foreign policy actually made us far less safe after the fall of the Soviet Union.

At the pivotal moment, we could have decided to pull Russia up to a European/American standard of living, rehabilitating a former enemy like we did with Japan and Germany.

Instead, we convinced them to do the neoliberal "shock-therapy," which probably filled a lot of pockets but also gave Russia Putin and the mafia economy.

A stable Euro-Russia would have no reason to attack the US, and would at worst be an economic competitor. Pushing them toward mafia Russia, we not only re-earned some of the Cold War distrust, but now some could probably go there and buy a nuke for a ham sandwich from a soldier who hasn't been paid in six months.

In this case, idealism and egalitarianism on human rights would also have been the pragmatic move for our security. Instead, our leaders sold us out to make their rich friends richer.

In the long run, this is why it's good for us that Latin America is shaking off the IMF & World Bank. When there people are doing well economically and feel like they control their own destinies and we aren't trying to keep them in grinding poverty, we have nothing to fear from them.

[tabasco]

1. Endless war and conflict is the goal of war profiteering robber barons.

Eisenhower did not do enough to stop the rise of the war economy profiteers when he was in office, but he did warn us when he left office how dangerous the profiteers were to our democracy. His warning went unheeded and now the criminal robber barons are in the driver's seat. Our country has been degraded, raped, and disgraced. I hope the People will wake up and retake control of our Nation.

http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

[yurbud]

2. Ike was more benign version of Baby Bush & Reagan: corporate employee

Posing as president. Speaking like that was probably one of the few things he did on defense or foreign policy that weren't dictated to him.