The World Turns Against America, a "Fiscal Mess"
by Rabbi David Eidensohn
President Vladimir V. Putin's news conference in Moscow and his picture graced the front page of the New York Times January 31, 2006. This is entirely appropriate, as President Putin has many people very worried about his policies. Where is Russia going? The news conference, according to the article, came after recent criticisms of Russia because of gas interruptions to Ukraine and Georgia. The President of Georgia even claimed that Russia blew up a pipe to make trouble for his country. Russia recently refused to allow the Chief Rabbi of Moscow to return to Russia, and only relented after international pressure was applied.
Mr. Putin once called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century. His senior economic adviser recently resigned, claiming that Putin has destroyed a liberal economy, taking control of it through the state. In the past years, Putin has maneuvered to reduce freedom and democracy throughout Russia, and to seize control himself. Where is he going? Is it back to Communism? Some say, it is back to Stalinism.
What people who are puzzled by Russian programs do not understand, is that the entire world is changing, in ways that challenge American values in the most serious way. For instance, we Americans thought in recent years that South America would be aligned with us regarding the belief in a liberal or free economy. Now it seems that South Americans are turning left, towards controlled economies. The uproar and rebellion in Venezuela against a leftist head of state is now over, and the leftists have won. Other South American countries recently have moved left. How did this happen? If Russia is moving away from its earlier direction to imitate America, why did it change its mind? This is a most critical question.
The answer is China. China was once a primitive country, without money, saddled with a huge population. It had little hope of entering the front ranks of the world. Nixon's trip to China changed all of this. America needed China to extricate itself from Viet Nam. China needed America to balance its increasingly hostile relationship with Russia. Many brutal border battles took place between Russia and China, and China needed America, even as America needed China, to stand together against Russia.
Nixon had no choice at the time but to recognize China and to deal with it. However, he remarked, that perhaps we are making a monster. He was right. But he was wrong, in a way. The issue is not whether American support and embracing of China would create a monster, but rather, whether American support of China would destroy America. This Nixon never considered. Internally, America has bled away her manufacturing life-blood to China, and is now in desperate fiscal straits, while China holds huge amounts of the American national debt. Anytime China calls in its debts, America would totter.
China, for the past 25 years, has steadily produced an incredible ten percent increase in its economy. America has a growth rate that is about the same as inflation, or, zero. China's controlled economy can offer security to its citizens. Chinese governmental coffers are bursting with money. America has a limited economic opportunity zone, and it is declining. Why?
America once offered everyone a chance. The swiftest and the brightest could get a college degree and earn a good living, or they could go into business and prosper. Others could work hard in factories and make a good living. As America now turns to the process of information and as American business transfer to China, Americans have less and less opportunities. People around the world notice this, and ask, "Why should we be like America? Let us be like China." This is what Putin is doing in Russia. This is what is happening in South America. Not only has China rivaled America, it has taken the fiscal blood of America and left America staggering with debts and losing its factories. Every year, China grows stronger and America weaker.
No country can survive by transferring its manufacturing base to a foreign and competitive country.
America is a fiscal failure, drowning in debt, borrowing billions of dollars each year just to pay for daily expenses, burdened with trillions of dollars of national debt, and faced with 11 trillion dollars in Social Security debt when the next generation retires. The new drug program effective January 1 will ultimately rival Social Security as a trillion dollar problem. There is no money to pay for the daily expenses of America. There is no money to pay for Social Security. There is no money to pay our debts. Each year, the debt grows by a large fraction of a trillion dollars. People notice this and turn to other, Chinese-like forms of government. Maybe, they think, democracy is just too unworkable. Let us have enough money to live on, and then we will worry about democracy.
The Western democracies, America and Europe, are bitter that they poured in hundreds of millions of dollars to the Palestinians who elected an anti-American terrorist Hamas government. Bush bet everything on democracy, and tried to sell it to the world. But America is a poor example of democracy in action. Democracy in action simply means that people elect politicians who will never make the hard decisions needed to provide an economy that grows and serves its people. Thus, democracy is seen in China, Russia, and South America, and elsewhere as well, as a threat to fiscal success.
President Bush cannot spread the message of "be like America" when America is a fiscal failure.