Introduction
President Obama is racing forward to establish his imperial legacy
throughout Russia, Asia and Latin America.
In the
last two years he has accelerated the buildup of his military nuclear
arsenal on the frontiers of Russia. The Pentagon has designed a high tech
anti-missile system to undermine Russian defenses.
In
Latin America, Obama has shed his shallow pretense of tolerating the
center—left electoral regimes. Instead he is has joined with rabid
authoritarian neo-liberals in Argentina; met with the judges and politicians
engineering the overthrow of the current Brazilian government; and encouraged
the emerging far-rightwing regimes in Peru under Keiko Fujimori and Colombia
under President Santos.
In
Asia, Obama has clearly escalated a military build-up threatening China’s
principle waterways in the South China Sea. Obama encouraged aggressive and
violent separatist groupings in Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjian and Taiwan. Obama
invites Beijing billionaires to relocate a trillion dollars in assets to the
‘laundry machines’ of North America, Europe and Asia. Meanwhile he has actively
blocked China’s long-planned commercial ‘silk route’ across Myanmar and west
Asia.
In the Middle
East, President Obama joined with Saudi Arabia as Riyadh escalated its brutal
war and blockade in Yemen. He directed Kenya and other African predator states
to attack Somalia. He has continued to back mercenary armies invading Syria
while collaborating with the Turkish dictator, Erdogan, as Turkish troops bomb
Kurdish, Syrian and Iraqi fighters who are engaged on the front lines against
Islamist terrorism.
President Obama and his minions have consistently groveled before the
Jewish State and its US Fifth Column, massively increasing US ‘tribute’ to Tel
Aviv. Meanwhile, Israel continues to seize thousands of acres of Palestinian
land murdering and arresting thousands of Palestinians, from young children to
aged grandparents.
The
Obama regime is desperate to overcome the consequences of his political,
military and economic failures of the past six years and establish the US as
the uncontested global economic and military power.
At this
stage, Obama’s supreme goal is to leave an enduring legacy, where he will have:
(1) surrounded and weakened Russia and China; (2) re-converted Latin America
into an authoritarian free-trade backyard for US plunder; (3) turned the Middle
East and North Africa into a bloody playpen for Arab and Jewish dictators bent
on brutalizing whole nations and turning millions into refugees to flood Europe
and elsewhere.
Once
this ‘legacy’ is established, our ‘Historic Black President’ can
boast that he has dragged our ‘great nation’ into more wars for
longer periods of time, costing more diverse human lives and creating more
desperate refugees than any previous US President, all the while polarizing and
impoverishing the great mass of working Americans. He will, indeed, set a ‘high
bar’ for his incumbent replacement, Madame Hilary Clinton to leap over and even
expand.
To
examine the promise of an Obama legacy and avoid premature judgements, it is
best to briefly recall the failures of his first 6 years and reflect on his
current inspired quest for a ‘place in history’.
Fear, Loathing and Retreat
Obama’s
shameless bailout of Wall Street contrasted sharply with the desires and
sentiments of the vast majority of Americans who had elected him. This was a
historic moment of great fear and loathing where scores of millions of
Americans demanded the federal government reign in the financial criminals,
stop the downward spiral of household bankruptcies and home foreclosures and
recovery America’s working economy. After a brief honeymoon following his
‘historic election’, the ‘historic’ President Obama turned his back on the
wishes of the people and transferred trillions of public money to ‘bailout’ the
banks and financial centers on Wall Street.
Not
satisfied with betraying the American workers and the beleaguered middle class,
Obama reneged on his campaign promises to end the war(s) in the Middle East by
increasing the US troop presence and expanding his drone-assassination warfare
against Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Syria.
US
troops re-invaded Afghanistan, fought and retreated in defeat. The Taliban
advanced. The US expanded its training of the puppet Iraqi army, which
collapsed on its first encounters with the Islamic State. Washington retreated
again. Regime change in Libya, Egypt and Somalia created predator-mercenary
states without any semblance of US control and dominance.
Obama
had become both a master of military defeats and financial swindles.
In the
Western Hemisphere, a continent of independent Latin American governments had
emerged to challenge US supremacy. The ‘Historic President’ Obama
was dismissed as a clueless hack of the US Empire who lacked any rapport with
governments south of the Panama Canal. While trade and investment flourished
between Latin America and Asia; Washington fell behind. Regional
political and economic agreements expanded, but Obama was left without allies.
Obama’s
clumsy attempts at US-backed ‘regime change’ were defeated in Venezuela and
elsewhere. Only the small, corrupt narco-state of Honduras fell into Obama’s
orbit with the Hillary Clinton-engineered overthrow of its elected
populist-nationalist president.
China
and Russia expanded and flourished as commodities boomed, wealth expanded and
demand for Chinese manufacturers exploded.
By 2013 Obama had no legacy.
The Recovery: Obama’s Lost Legacy
Obama
began the road to establishing his ‘legacy’ with the US-financed coup in
Ukraine, spearheaded by the first bona fide Nazi militia since WWII. After
celebrating the violent ‘regime change’ against Ukraine’s elected government,
Obama’s new oligarch-puppet regime and its ethno-nationalist army have been a
disaster, losing control of the industrialized Donbas region to ethnic Russian
rebels and completely losing the strategic Crimea when the population
overwhelmingly voted to re-join Russia after 50 years. Meanwhile, the
oligarch-‘president’ Poroshenko and his fellow puppets have pilfered several
billion dollars in ‘aid’ from the EU…all in pursuit of the Obama legacy’.
Obama
then slapped devastating economic sanctions against Russia for its role
in the Crimean referendum and its support for the millions of Russian speakers
in Donbas, and in the process forced the European Union to make major trade
sacrifices. For their role in creating a real “American legacy” for Mr.
Obama, the Germans, French and the other twenty-eight countries have sacrificed
billions of Euros in trade and investments – alienating large sectors of their
own agricultural and manufacturing economy.
The
Obama regime placed nuclear weapons on the Polish border with Russia, pointed
at the Russian heartland. Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians joined Obama’s
military exercises stationing US ships and attack aircraft in the Baltic Sea
threatening Russia’s security.
Obama’s Legacy in Latin America
The
Obama regime intensified its efforts to re-establish supremacy with the demise
of the center-left regimes following elections in late 2013 to the present.
Obama’s
‘legacy’ in Latin America is based on the return to power
of neo-liberal elites in the region. Their successful elections were the result
of several factors, including: (1) the rise of rightwing economic power in
Latin America; (2) the decay and corruption of political power within the
Left; 3) incapacity of the Left to develop its own independent mass media to
challenge the media monopoly of the right; and (4) the failure of center-left
regimes to diversify their economy and develop growth outside the boundaries
defined by the dominant capitalist sectors.
The
Obama regime worked closely with the political-business elite, organizing the
political campaigns and controlling key economic policies even during the
center-Left governments. The Left regimes had financed, subsidized and rewarded
right-wing business interests in agro-mineral industries, banking, and the
media as well as in manufacturing and imports.
As long
as worldwide demand for primary materials was strong, the Center-Left
governments had plenty of room to adjust their social spending for workers
while accommodating business interests. When demand and prices fell, budget
deficits forced the Center-Left to cut back on social spending for the masses
as well as subsidies for the business elite. In response, the business sector
organized a full-scale attack on the government – in defense of elite power.
The Center-Left failed to counter the growing power and position of their
business elite adversaries.
The
business elite launched a full-scale propaganda war via its captive mass media
– focusing on real or imagined corruption scandals discrediting Center-Left
politicians. The Left lacked its own effective mass media to answer the Right’s
accusations, having failed to democratize the corporate media monopolies.
The
Center-Left parties adopted the elite’s technique of financing political
campaigns - namely, through bribes, contract concessions, patronage other deal
making with billionaire private and state contractors. The center-Left imagined
it could compete with the free-market rightwing in financing campaigns
and candidates via swindlers - and not through class struggle. This was a game
they could never master.
The
Right, however, mobilized their allies within police, judicial and public
institutions to prosecute and disqualify the Center-Left for committing the
same crimes the Right had evaded.
The
Center-Left did not mobilize the workers and employees to establish even
minimal controls over the elite and assume some managerial power. They thought
they could compete with the Right on its own terms, through shady business and
chicanery.
The
Center-Left relied on financing its administration and policies through the
commodity boom in demand for its natural resources – overlooking the
fundamental instability and volatility of the global commodity market. While
the Right openly condemned the ‘weakness of the Center-Left’ – in
private, it pursued policies even more dependent on overseas speculators and
narrow elites.
In
Argentina, as the economy declined, the leadership of the rightwing, led by
Mauricio Marci, launched a successful presidential campaign involving the mass
media, banks, middle class voters and agro-mining elites. Immediately upon taking power, the Macri
regime cut social services for workers and the lower middle class, slashing
their living standards and lay off thousands of government employees. Obama saw
Macri as his kind of legacy savior and viewed Argentina as the new
center of US power in Latin America – with plans for more regime change in
Brazil, Venezuela and throughout the region.
In
Brazil, the Center-Left Workers’ Party (PT) faced a massive attack on its power
base by the extreme rightwing parties. Corruption scandals rocked the entire
spectrum of the political class, but the PT was most heavily implicated by massive
fraud in Brazil’s huge national oil company, Petrobras. The PT regime’s
troubles intensified as the country entered a recession with the drop in demand
for its agro-mining exports. Growing fiscal deficits compounded the regime’s
problems. The Brazilian hard Right mobilized its entire apparatus of elite
power – the courts, judges, police and intelligence agencies - in a bid to
overthrow the PT government and impose an authoritarian neo-liberal regime
seizing all financial, business and productive assets
The
Center-Left had never been very left, if at all. Under Presidents Lula and
Rousseff (2003-2016), the powerful mining and agricultural elites flourished;
banking, investment and multi-national enterprises prospered. The Center-Left
made some paternalistic concessions to the lowest income classes, and increased
wages for labor and farm workers. But the PT relegated labor to the background
while it signed business agreements and granted tax concessions to
capital. It failed to engage Brazilian
workers in class struggle.
The
Right was never engaged in any struggle with a genuine leftist government
pressing business for structural changes. Nevertheless, the Right sought to
eliminates even the most superficial reforms. It would accept nothing short
of total control, including: the privatization of the major national oil
company, the reduction of wages, pensions and transport subsidies and a
slashing of social programs. The Brazilian Rightwing coup – a fake impeachment
organized by indicted crooks – is designed to vastly re-concentrate wealth, and
re-establish the power of business, while plunging millions into poverty and
repressing the principal organized mass movements. In Brazil, the
elite-controlled media, courts and politicians act as judge, jury and jailers –
against a center-left regime which had never taken control over the major
institutions of elite power.
Obama and the Axis of his Legacy
Political rightists join police to control the multitudes and seize
power, re-establishing deep ties among Brazil, Washington and Argentina. They
will then move toward the neo-liberal re-conquest of all Latin America. Against
this new wave, it must be understood that Obama’s Latin American legacy is too
recent, too hasty and too disjointed – the new Right exhibits the same or even
worse features of the recently deceased Left.
Argentina’s Marci borrows $15 billion at 8% interest, when the economy
is fracturing, employment is collapsing, exports and worldwide demand is
declining. At the same time, President
Mauricio Marci’s cabinet is plagued by major financial scandals ‘a la Panama
Papers’. The entire political party-trade union-employed working class is
profoundly disenchanted with Marci’s minority rule.
Argentina may not turn out to be Obama’s enduring Latin Legacy:
While Macri may open the door for a brief Washington take-over, the results
will be catastrophic and the future, given Argentina’s recent history of
popular street uprisings, is uncertain.
Likewise in Brazil, the impeachment/coup will result in new and more
numerous investigations with trials of post-impeachment politicians and a
deepening economic crisis. Brazil’s Vice-President, who turned against Rouseff,
now faces corruption charges, as do his supporters. The prolonged confrontation
precludes any basic continuity. The rightwing regime’s policy of slashing
wages, pensions and poverty ‘baskets’ will detonate large-scale confrontations
with the polarized population. Obama’s ‘legacy’ will be a brief episode
- celebrating the ouster of the Workers’ Party President followed by a long
period of instability and disorder.
Rightist regimes in Venezuela, Colombia and Peru will be part of Obama’s
‘legacy’ but to what lasting end?
The
Venezuelan rightwing congress – dubbed the MUD – seeks to
overthrow the elected president. It
demands the release of several right-wing assassins from prison, the
privatization of the oil industry, and a deep cut in social programs (health
and education). They would reduce employees’ wages and eliminate food
subsidies. The MUD has no competent plan or capacity to grow the
oil economy and overcome chronic food shortages. The MUD would merely replace
the Left’s subsidized economy with massive price increases for basic
commodities -- reducing domestic consumption to a fraction of its current
level. In other words, the right-wing offensive may defeat the Chavista
left but it will not stabilize Venezuela or develop a viable neo-liberal
alternative. Any new rightwing regime will deteriorate rapidly and the chronic
problem of criminal violence will exceed the current levels. The alliance
between Washington and Venezuela’s far right will hardly support Obama’s claim
to a historic legacy. More likely, it will serve as another
example of a failed right wing state unable to replace a weakening left regime.
Similar
circumstances can be found among other ‘emerging’ rightist regimes.
In
Colombia, the current rightwing President Santos talks to the FARC guerrillas,
but also accommodates the paramilitary death squads. His talks of peace
settlements and social reform are linked to the genocidal right, led by the
former President Uribe. Meanwhile, the economy stagnates with oil and metal
prices collapsing on the world market. Colombian living standards have declined
and the promise of a rightwing revival grows dim. The US-Colombian alliance may
undercut the FARC but the rightwing does not offer any prospect for modernizing
the economy or stabilizing the society.
Similarly in Peru, the rightwing wins votes and embraces free markets,
but growth declines, investments and profits dry up and mass disenchantment
grows among the poor
promising street conflicts.
The Obama
‘legacy’ in Latin America has followed a series of brutal victories,
which have no capacity to re-impose a stable ‘new order’ of free markets and
free elections. The initial wave of favorable investments and lucrative
concessions will fail to revive and recalibrate a new growth dynamics.
More
ominously, Obama relied on mass murder to replace an elected
leftist-nationalist president in Honduras and imposed a regime of terror
against the poor and indigenous population. Meanwhile, illicit offshore
handouts reward speculators in Argentina.
Obama’s legacy in Latin America reflects
an entire spectrum from
illicit-rightwing coups to oust the elected governments.
Obama’s
contemporary ‘Latin American legacy’ reeks of gross electoral
manipulation preparing the ground for bloody class wars.
Obama’s Legacy in the Ukraine, Yemen and
Syria
The
Obama regime thought it could manage widespread conflicts, uprisings and wars
to advance its global supremacy.
To that
end, Obama spent billions of dollars in weapons and propaganda arming Neo-Nazi
para-military troops to seize power in Ukraine. A grotesque, brutal gang of
oligarchs (and disgraced, foreign fugitives – like the ousted Georgian leader,
Mikhail Saakashvili) served Washington in the puppet Kiev regime. Critics,
journalists, jurists and citizens are being assassinated. The economy has
collapsed; prices skyrocket; incomes declined by half; unemployment tripled and
millions have sought refuge abroad. Wars raged between Russian ethnic citizen
armies in the Donbas and the puppet Kiev regime. The people of Crimea voted to
rejoin Russia. Meanwhile, economic sanctions against trade with Russia have
exacerbated shortages for the people of Ukraine.
Under Obama’s
stewardship the Ukraine became a world-class… basket case: so much for
his European legacy. He can rightly claim credit for imposing a
thoroughly retrograde regime of Klepto-capitalism with no redeeming feature.
Obama
embraced Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen – destroying the life and cities of
the poorest nation in the Middle East. Obama’s ‘legacy’ in Yemen
stands for the systematic obliteration of a sovereign people: Obama performs
his tricks for billionaire Saudi despots while savaging the innocent. To the
Israelis in Palestine and the Saudis in Yemen, Obama pays homage to the
criminals responsible for millions of shattered lives.
What of
the Obama ‘legacy’ in Syria and Libya? How many million Africans and Arabs have been
murdered or fled on rotten boats in destitution. Only the rankest gang of
corrupt media pundits in the US media can pretend this gangster President
should evade a war crimes tribunal.
Conclusion
The
Obama regime has pursued wars of unremitting destruction. It has forged
partnerships with terrorists and death squads as it seeks short-term imperial
victories, which end in dismal failures.
The imperial
legacy of this ‘historic’ president is a mirage of pillage, squalor and
destruction. The effect of his political lies has even begun register here
among the American public: Who trusts the US Congress and the President? And in
Europe, who trusts Obama’s European partners as they eagerly pushed for wars in
the Middle East and North Africa and now fear and loathe the millions of their
victims—refugees fleeing to the cities of Europe, with the drowned corpses of
uprooted communities spoiling their beaches?
- Obama
pushed for wars and the Europeans receive the victims - with fear and disgust.
- Obama’s
victories are temporary, blighted and reversed.
- Obama
bombed Afghanistan yesterday and now flees renewed resistance.
- Obama’s allies are again plundering Latin America but face
imminent ouster via popular uprisings.
- Obama
terrorized and fragmented Syria yesterday but lost elections the day after.
- Obama
threatens China’s economy while eagerly buying China’s products.
Throughout Latin America capitalist profiteers plunge into wild
financial adventures, theft and chaos. In the Middle East, the US stands on the
crumbling palaces of a moribund Saudi regime. The much-proclaimed imperial
advances are based on grand theft everywhere, from Egypt and Turkey to the
Ukraine.
Simply
stated: the US formula for a successful legacy is failing at the precise moment
that it claims success! Obama and the Right have created a world of chaos and
disintegration. Obama and his legions, the US and Europe have no future in
peace or war, election or defeats.
There
is no imperial legacy for the ‘historic’ President Obama!
© Copyright 2016 by AxisofLogic.com
This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you!
|