Many Americans are dismayed by the prospect of their country, still the most powerful and affluent in the world, coming to resemble some second-tier nation like Greece as it appears to tempt disaster by going into default and essentially declaring bankruptcy. In the recent past, “austerity budgets” were complacently viewed as measures imposed on fiscally irresponsible nations by the International Monetary Fund. Now, just as in the 1980s, when President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher were forced by stagnating economic conditions to rewrite the social contract that had been created out of the class struggles of the 1930s, both Europe and the United States are compelled by an even graver economic crisis to further roll back the advances that had come out of those struggles. Until recently, liberal Americans desirous of enhancing our own version of the welfare state, (recently renamed, with the usual respect for language demonstrated by the right, the “entitlement” state), could point to European models. Now, however, with the onset of a globalized economy largely spearheaded and modeled by the U.S., and austerity measures being imposed not just in London, but in every European capital from Paris to Athens, we are witnessing a trans-Atlantic strategic alliance the likes of which has not been seen since World War II.In the good old days, Ike and Monty could pore over their maps and plan their battle against a common, external foe. Conquer Germany and Japan, and all would once again be right with the world. That conflict resulted in an estimated 70 million human casualties, many dying on the same ground that just twenty-five years earlier had cost nearly 40 million lives. The root cause of those cataclysmic wars was an underlying economic crisis which all sides shared in common but then had the “luxury” of externalizing in some demonic foe. The fall of the Soviet Union, the erstwhile candidate as a force for evil, (Reagan’s Evil Empire), left the modern industrial nation states of the world faced with a novel situation in world history—when the next crisis occurred, they would have to conclude, with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, that “the fault was not in our stars, But in ourselves.” We are thus faced with all the preconditions for grand alliances being formed against a common enemy with none available. Moscow and China, though not exactly best friends of the West and armed to the teeth, seem thoroughly reconciled to their respective fates of building casinos and speed trains. Feeling cornered, and badly needing an excuse to go to war, it is possible that the twenty-first century will revert to the fourteenth in yet another respect and resort to a religious crusade, raining havoc on Tehran—unless, of course, the other axes of evil in Havana or Pyongyang attack us. Attacking Tehran would seem to ill-advised, since, at the inevitable cost of countless lives, the global economic and political reshuffling that the two world wars accomplished would be far out of reach. (Although we probably should not rule out absolute madness.) Nevertheless—even if we are not quite ready to acknowledge the fact— we already in the midst of World War III, only this time the masters of the trans-Atlantic alliance, seated worriedly at their conference tables, can come up with no better plan than to tear up contracts with their own people that, in some cases, took centuries to ratify. They have thereby found their enemy in such as unionized workers, school teachers, the aged, the poor, the uneducated and, to put a fine point on it, potentially just about everyone beyond the moat.
Former President Bush, to cite just one example, showed no reluctance to tear up one such contract drawn as far back as 1215, when King John was compelled to sign the Magna Carta. That may be seen as merely a war-time expedient, but here in the U.S., we are virtually being buried in shredded contracts, falling on us out of the skies of Washington and various state capitals like ticker-tape. This regimen proceeds with the assistance of the highest court in the land, a currently far right institution that produces, at turns, obvious findings such as the right of corporations to spend unlimited company assets on political candidates in their favor, as well as a rather shocking and crass betrayal of no less significant a tenet of conservative philosophy than the sacredness of private property when it found that eminent domain extended, not merely to governments’ priorities, but to Walmart’s. The right to collective bargaining, the right to unionize at all, the right to a pension, to social security, to even modest health care, to clean air and water, to safety in the workplace, on the roads and in the skies, to a decent education, to police and fire protection, to access to free reading material, to communications of any kind not linked to the demands of the marketplace, these and more are all under attack or are already things of the past, and it is not just in New York or Terre Haute, but in London and Paris and Athens that the battle now rages.
As in all wars, there is no shortage of those true believers who, (often the most likely to lose life and limb in the conflict), will rally round the flag of battle and willingly turn their weapons on the only enemies they are capable of recognizing, namely, people just like themselves. Tragically, the last century, a time marked by previously unimagined advances in science, technology, medicine and communications, also saw previously unimaginably horrific loss of life. While one should not forget the many who have died in Iraq, Afghanistan and other flash points around the world, so far, relatively little blood has been shed. On the other hand, World War III has just begun.
