A better world is incompatible, indeed is impossible under the reign of U.S.-led capitalist dysfunction and destruction. That the world is on the rack of tumultuous times is widely agreed. The immediate turmoil comes from the global economic impact of soaring inflation in the price of basic consumer goods.
Of priority concern is food insecurity and hunger for billions of people on our planet, and not just for those nations considered low-income and underdeveloped. Poverty has hit record levels in so-called “rich nations” where many citizens are finding it harder to put food on the table for their families.
All this is an expression and condemnation of historic failure in the Western economic system. The system of private profit over human need is increasingly seen to be totally inadequate and obsolete. Moreover, it is increasingly seen to be deliberately subjecting people to poverty and crisis which makes it all the more condemnable. Corporate capitalism has created dire problems facing the planet and is exacerbating these problems, not alleviating them. The system itself must be repudiated for something more democratic, sustainable, and effective in delivering human needs.
But on top of the inherent economic failings of the Western system, we should add the abject failure of ideologically driven politics.
The present growing economic crisis has been intensified by specific policy choices made by corporate-controlled governments and their unelected grossly overpaid bureaucrats.
Laughably, the Western mis-rulers have sought to shift the blame onto Russia.
U.S. President Joe Biden has even named inflation after Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Biden refers to skyrocketing consumer prices as “Putin’s price hike”. This is a ridiculous blame game, one that Americans and other Western citizens are not buying. They’re not buying for a good reason. It’s patent rubbish.
It is evident that the United States has been sitting on a ticking inflation bomb for several years from its endless money-printing fiscal policies and abuse of the global privileges from the dollar arbitrarily used as the main reserve currency. Relentless piling up of U.S. national debt (now nearly $30 trillion and counting) and the wild excesses of subsidizing corporations, banks and billionaires have led to social chaos from grotesque inequality and poverty. The same degenerative process of neoliberal capitalism is seen across Europe.
But added to the European self-inflicted problems is the wanton sabotaging of energy relations with Russia – at the behest of Washington.
The European Union is facing an inflation maelstrom largely because of energy prices going through the roof. That in turn stems from the self-harm of sanctioning energy trade with the continent’s long-time partner, Russia. The Brussels-based think tank Bruegel noted this week that general price inflation is “affecting Europe a lot more than the United States because we depend on Russia a lot more”.
The decisions to sanction Russia by the United States and Europe are ideological. These decisions are taken by a political class that has no concern about the impact on their societies. In short, this is the misrule of an undemocratic elite. To then turn around and shift the blame onto Russia is a contemptible form of escapism from their own misdeeds.
Western ruling cliques (“governments” is too polite a term) have imposed illegal sanctions on Russia in a bid to strangle that nation’s economy. This economic warfare has hit Russia’s ability to supply to the world its copious energy commodities as well as its abundant supply of cereals and mineral fertilizers. All this has predictably rebounded in exacerbating consumer inflation. That should be obvious in a self-evidently interconnected global economy. Yet Western elites either did not see the consequences of their hostile policies or they are feigning ignorance by trying now to blame Russia.
Let’s for a moment endure the views of the European Union’s unelected leaders Charles Michel and Ursula Von Der Leyen. The former is the European Council president who accused Russia this week of using “food as a weapon”. While Von Der Leyen, the European Commission president, had the audacity to claim “the Kremlin is using food as part of a terror arsenal”.
Washington and its European vassals are absurdly scapegoating Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine for the ills of the world. Specifically, the Western elites are trying to make out that that conflict has created critical shortages of wheat and other grain staples. Russia is accused of blockading Ukrainian seaports. The reality is that the NATO-backed Kiev regime has blocked shipping from laying explosive mines along its coast and harbors. Kiev is refusing to de-mine the sea lanes for civilian shipping. As well as that, if the Ukrainian regime wanted to export cereals it could do so economically by land routes to Belarus. However, that option is precluded because the EU has slapped Belarus with sanctions as it has with Russia. Here we see yet another manifestation of self-defeating policies come home to roost.
To inculpate Russia for the global economic turmoil and in particular, the looming food crisis is utter nonsense. The war in Ukraine could have been avoided if the U.S. and its NATO partners had simply engaged with Russia in reasonable diplomacy to address justifiable security concerns. The Americans and their European surrogates rejected any such diplomacy because their agenda is driven by hostility and dubious hegemonic ambitions. In any case, the conflict in Ukraine is merely one aspect of a more general breakdown stemming from chronic Western failure.
The present global malaise has specific causality that is rooted in the Western economic system and its imperialist warmongering against Russia, as well as other irrationally designated enemies, foremost China but also Iran, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, and Nicaragua, among others. Isn’t the very designation of such “enemies” itself a giveaway of how preposterous and illegitimate the Western imperialist regimes are?
Surely, the most damning testimony of corruption and misrule is the vast resources (countless billions of dollars and euros) currently being squandered on military weapons by Washington and its European vassals to prop up a Nazi-infested regime in Ukraine. The consequences are not just global economic turmoil and hunger. Western capitalism is driving the world to war and possibly nuclear conflagration.
A different world is possible and is within practical achievement, a world of peaceful, humane and fraternal relations. But such a better world is incompatible, indeed is impossible under the reign of U.S.-led capitalist dysfunction and destruction. The truth is staring the world in the face, and no amount of Western elite lies and scapegoating can conceal it.
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