The American Ruling Class and Foreign Policy Part One

I hope you watched the video as I asked before reading this. The idea that man gets across is crucial to developing my thesis here. The man in the video, giving a book talk at Borders, is called Russ Baker. Baker is an investigative journalist and the author of a book about the Bush family called Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces that Put it in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America (2009). The book was later re-release in paperback form with a slightly different subtitle. The paperback is Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years.

He talks about how power like wealth gets passed down from generation to generation, and thus we have a virtually dynastic 'ruling class.'

What I'm going to argue is the following: the American ruling class has, what I would call, a Munchausen by Proxy approach to foreign policy. Please understand that I mean the term 'Muchausen by Proxy' precisely the way it is used clinically. The psychological condition Munchausen by Proxy refers to a mother or authoritative female caregiver, usually, who feels compelled to deliberately induce sickness in a child she is caring for, by poisoning or some other means, so that she -- the caregver -- can rush the child to the hospital emergency room, and be seen by the hospital staff and "the world" as heroically competent and cool and calm under pressure and all that.

What exactly am I saying? How, precisely, am I using the concept of 'Munchausen by Proxy' (in its precise clinical usage, as I mentioned) in application to the American ruling class, the world, and foreign policy?

Follow this analagous, simile comparison. The American ruling class are like the mother afflicted with the Munchausen by Proxy compulsion. The Third World or 'Developing World' are the baby or toddler upon whom the mother constantly inflicts with a never-ending cycle of sickening and recovery. The court of public opinion as disseminated through the mainstream news media is the equivalent of the hospital staff, the mother's social circle, and public who may read about the brave way she faces her 'trials and tribulations' concerning her child -- those who happen to accept her narrative of 'heroism.'

What I'm saying is that we can look back over history, well over a century, and find a pattern. The ruling class will destabilize a small, Third World country (or region, I suppose), based on one spurious justification or another -- it could be communism or Islamic terrorism, or anything else -- so that they (either the same team or a different unit) can come along and seem to heroically fix it. BY THE WAY, THIS IS WHY I WANTED YOU TO WATCH THE VIDEO FIRST BEFORE READING MY ESSAY. BAKER TALKS ABOUT THE UPPER CLASS, RULING CLASS PEOPLE WHO GROW UP IN THE BIG HOUSES ON THE HILL, WITH THE HALLS LINED WITH PAINTINGS OF GENERATION AFTER GENERATION AFTER GENERATION AFTER GENERATION, AND SO FORTH, OF FAMILY ANCESTORS, NO DOUBT GLORIOUS ANCESTORS. BAKER TALKED ABOUT HOW "VERY, VERY, VERY IMPORTANT" GENERATIONS ARE TO THE RULING CLASS, AND HOW, THROUGH THIS PROCESS HINTED AT, THE FAMILIES ARE "INCULCATING IN THEIR CHILDREN THE VALUES THAT THEY STAND FOR, VALUES THAT IF WE FOUND OUT ABOUT THEM, WE WOULDN'T BE TOO HAPPY."

You know, there's an apochryphal story concerning a conversation between Fitzgerald and Hemmingway. Fitzgerald said, "You know the rich are very different from you and me." Hemmignway said, "Yeah, they have more money." Fitzgerald said, "No, its more than that."

I'm going to argue on Fitzgerald side of the debate, that it is indeed "more than that," which separates the behavior of the ruling class from that of the rest of us.

Excluded

In looking back over a century and seeing the pattern I'm talking about, I am EXCLUDING World War One, World War Two, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. World War One was a war of capitalist competition among the European powers. World War Two was Germany's revenge, since Germany had been blamed for first world war, and made to pay crushing reparations which sent inflation to a level where three generations of a family's savings were just enough to buy a quarter pound of butter.

The Vietnam War was the United States's attempt to help France hold on to its former colony. The Korean War was the United States's Cold War struggle to keep Korea out of the Soviet Communist orbit and firmly plugged into the Western capitalist system. And also, these were global-scale wars.

Since about 1980 we have been in the era of 'low-intensity conflict.' We're talking about wars that are not global but highly localized, though no less destructive, of course. The American ruling class are not suicidal, they don't want anymore global wars, I should think. Nor do they want anymore morally ambiguous 'quagmires' like Vietnam.

No, I think they want "quick and easy," "in and out" "conflicts" (undeclared wars, which is all we've had in the United States since 1941), that, again, can make them seen heroic. I believe they feel overwhelmingly compelled -- as a class group, in a structural psycho-ideological sense -- to keep conflict going, to always deny the world peace. It's not necessarily, I don't think, that they have an abstract objection to 'world peace,' there not a bunch of psychopathic nihilists.

But I have reason to believe that they have a rather cartoonish view of human nature. You know the cartoon, The Simpsons? Remember the first Halloween episode when Homer got hold of a magic monkey's paw? Lisa got hold of that monkey's paw and wished for world peace and the wish was granted.

But what happened next? Eventually, two aliens from outer space, in their space ship, flying saucer (two giant squid-like creatues with a single eye), came to Earth and conquered it easily. The take-away was that world peace had made humanity soft, weak, and unaware. It's silly, of course, but I believe this is PRECISELY the fear that animates the American ruling class. I believe that they fear that if (and hopefully when) we move to a world where there is no war or 'low-intensity conflict,' where everyone (every single individual) has more than enough to eat and drink, where the environment is clean and healthy (and as much as possible of the damage already done is repaired), where no children die of perfectly preventable diseases, where healthcare and education through graduate school is completely free, where personal debt for all is negligible, where democracy is realized throughout all levels of society, the home, the community, the nation, and most especially the workplace, and where we have finally liberated ourselves from the dark fantasy of an economic system that irrationally promises infinite growth on a finite planet -- humanity would internally collapse; they fear that such a world would make humanity soft, weak, and unaware JUST LIKE ON THAT HALLOWEEN EPISODE OF THE SIMPSONS! SERIOUSLY!

The Reason Theorem

Now, in saying that I believe the American ruling class are afflicted, if you will, with Munchausen by Proxy with respect to their approach to foreign policy, I sound like I'm being terribly reductionist and arbitrarily deterministic. As a corrective to that let me introduce something I called "The Reason Theorem."

For me, human motivation is divided into two parts. One part is REASONS (all capital letters) which I define as the underying psycho-ideological motivations that individuals and groups of individuals which make them "tick" provide the "spiritual," "ethical," "moral" justification for doing whatever it is that they might do, or want to do.

Okay, "reasons" (all lower case letters) are, for me, the surface justifications, or practical, material circumstances in the world which seem to compel or justify actions people or institutions take, which they had always wanted to take (REASONS) but had not previously had the practical opportunity to do.

So when I say that the American ruling class have a Munchausen by Proxy approach to foreign affairs, I'm saying that this MP is The REASON motivating the ruling class. But certain practical circumstances in the world have to exist in order for them to physically manifest their REASONS!

For example, Bernie Madoff committed a sixty-five billion dollar Ponzi scheme fraud. Now, he may have done this for REASONS (all capital letters) of "greed," "competitiveness," or basically, as I think, what you can think of as the Calvinist impulse, Calvinism being our psycho-ideological cultural heritage and origin of capitalism. But if there had not been certain "reasons" (all lower case letters) in the form of certain practically accomodating political and economic structures which facilitated the manifestation of his "REASONS" of "greed," or "competitiveness," he would not have been able to perpetrate the fraud.

Broadly speaking, one of the "reasons'" included the generally business deregulatory and finance-liberalizing ethos of the federal government in the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; but there were "red flags" raised about the potential illegality of Madoff's activities even by the standards of the forgiving era of what is sometimes called 'neoliberal' capitalism of the late '70s, '80s, '90s, and 2000s. Another "reason" (practical, material circumstances in the world) was that the SEC had problems. They were understaffed and not really of a sufficiently aggressive mindset regarding fraud, or at least fraud involving big players. And so on and so forth. But you needn't take my word for it. Have a look at an article by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibi called "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216

If not for those practical structures or "reasons" (all lower case letters) Madoff's "REASONS" (all capital letters) either would have remained internal and non-manifested in the world or they would have been channeled, by necessity, in another, unknowable direction.

One thing to keep in mind, though

The business community, having wrecked the American economy in 1929, bringing about The Great Depression, suffered an operational setback with the New Deal program's regulatory rules restraining what business could do and how they could do it. For a little while, through various regulations "reasons" (all lower case letters) were suppressed so that they could not manifest their REASONS (all capital letters) of "greed," "competitiveness," and "fear," to maximize profit at the expense of social justice and equality, which they had done in the 1920s.

So, they were disarmed, if you will, of their "reasons" (lower case letters) but their REASONS (capital letters) ddn't go anywhere. And fuelled by their "REASONS" they constantly looked for and lobbied for ways to circumvent, evade, and ignore the regulations. When they were politically strong enough again, they arranged to have the regulations eliminated. Follow? Good.

Therefore, starting in the late 1970s the "reasons" of the business community begin to be restored and by the late 1990s, once again, the business community's "REASONS" are, once again, given free and full reign.

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Territorial and capitalist "logics" of state and empire

The Munchausen by Proxy syndrome of the ruling class, in foreign policy is what I am calling the ruling class's REASON. It manifests itself, in two ways, in my view. First, their REASON takes advantage of fortuitous (from their perspective) circumstances in the world which they may or may not have created, or which were the "fortuitous" but unintended consequences of other actions taken earlier. Or, the ruling class, with their REASONS rattling around in their collective psyche like a wild beast trapped in a cage, trying to get out, create the "reasons," physical circumstances in the world that require the release of their REASON-beast.

This is true of the state (political division of the ruling class, not the whole state) and the corporate community (the big business section of the ruling class).

Now, the Muchausen by Proxy of the ruling class in foreign policy expresses itself, it seems to me, in two general modes of action. These are what David Harvey, in his book, The New Imperialism (2003), calls the "territorial" and "capitalist" "logics of state and empire. Empire, in the era of capitalism, has BOTH a territorial and capitalist justification to it.

Territorial Logic of Empire

What I mean by the 'territorial' logic of empire is this. A state, any state, sets out to increase its power in relations to other states. A state will engage in various geostrategic activities to try to increase its power at the expense of its rivals or strategic competitors.

When a state engages in imperial activities (military or economic), it is pursuing tactical and strategic goals with respect to one or more of its rivals.

Capitalist Logic of Empire

A state will engage in imperialist practices, but in such a way that no justification can be given that the government was acting for reasons of self defense of the citizens within the territorial lines of the state, "national security." Business interests are visibly and clearly at the bottom of it.

What I'm going to do next time, in part two, is look at five episodes from world history and try to show how they fit my thesis of the American ruling class having a Munchausen by Proxy approach to foreign policy.

A. The way that American business interests sponsored the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, tilting that country, counterintuitively, in a communistic direction. I will be relying on the scholarship of the late Dr. Antony (no 'h') C. Sutton, an economist, historian, and writer, who was a researcher at the the Hoover Institute at Stanford. (Territorial Logic)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton

B. The U.S. Iraq war of 1991, when Saddam Hussein, who had been a close ally of America in the 1980s, was turned on by the Bush I administration, told that we had "no opinion" about his dealing with Iraq's border dispute with Kuwait, and then when he invades as expected, the Bush administration goes on the warpath. (Territorial Logic)

C. The U.S. Iraq war of 2003. No weapons of mass destruction or links to Al Quaeda, etc. (Territorial Logic)

D. The IMF (which is controlled by the U.S. Treasury) "shock therapy" restructuring of the economy of post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s. (Capitalist Logic)

E. The U.S. overthrow of the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. (Capitalist Logic)

Okay? Until next time, then.

Let's get out of here with a little something like this.....

And now part two.

http://wingedcentaur.hubpages.com/hub/The-American-Ruling-Class-and-Foreign-Policy-Part-Two