June 14, 2009
The Financial Times

Washington Cannot Call All the Shots

US officials wanted to attend Yekaterinburg as observers. They were told no

by Michael Hudson

Challenging America will be the focus of meetings in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on Monday and Tuesday for Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other leaders of the six-nation Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. The alliance comprises Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia.

The attendees have assured American diplomats that dismantling the US financial and military hegemony is not their aim. They simply want to discuss mutual aid – but in a way that has no role for the US or for the dollar as a vehicle for trade among these countries.

The meeting is an opportunity for China, Russia and India to "build an increasingly multipolar world order", as Mr Medvedev put it in a St Petersburg speech this month. What he meant was this: we have reached our limit in subsidising the US military encirclement of Eurasia while also allowing the US to appropriate our exports, companies and real estate in exchange for paper money of questionable worth. "The artificially maintained unipolar system", Mr Medvedev said, was based on "one big centre of consumption, financed by a growing deficit, and thus growing debts, one formerly strong reserve currency, and one dominant system of assessing assets and risks".

. . . Mr Medvedev concluded his St Petersburg speech: "What we need are financial institutions of a completely new type, where particular political issues and motives, and particular countries, will not dominate."

. . . Foreigners see a financial system backed by American military bases encircling the globe. The IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organisation and other Washington surrogates are seen as vestiges of a lost American empire no longer able to rule by economic strength, left only with military domination. They see this hegemony cannot continue without adequate revenues and are attempting to hasten the bankruptcy of the US financial-military world order. If China, Russia and their allies have their way, the US will no longer live off the savings of others, nor have the money for unlimited military spending.

US officials wanted to attend Yekaterinburg as observers. They were told no. It is a word that Americans will hear much more in the future.

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[Michael Hudson is professor of economics at the University of Missouri.]

Enver Masud, "A Four-Point Plan for Bailing Out America," The Wisdom Fund, February 7, 2009

[There needs to be a general acceptance that the current model has failed. The brakes-off, deregulate or die, privatise or stagnate, lunch is for wimps, greed is good, what's good for the financial sector is good for the economy model--John Lanchester, "It's Finished," London Review of Books, May 28, 2009]

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