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The Deep State and American Democracy

Posted on June 22, 2014

When I first visited The University of California in October 1963, the most talked about book on the Berkeley campus was “The Invisible Government” by David Wise. At the time, I was reminded of President Eisenhower’s warning in January 1961, a few days before John Kennedy’s inauguration, on the dangers of the power of military industrial complex’s pervasive influence throughout America’s town halls and cities and the danger it entailed to the future of American democracy.
Over the decades, discussion about American corporate and financial power in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government has permeated in newspaper and media outlets.

the invisible government

the invisible government

When I was teaching at Columbia University in New York, in 1986-87, the late John Bresnan, head of The Ford Foundation Jakarta Office 1969-74, lamented to me that most young men were more interested in making money in Wall Street than pursuing an academic career. This was the period when the Michael Douglas movie “Wall Street” captured the imagine of middle class Americans who wanted to make US 200.000 a year.

Fast foward to 2014. The military industrial complex has over the past 15 years transformed itself into the Military, Industrial and Financial Complex, which was initially Eisenhower’s choice of words in 1961.

America has turned into one of the industrialed world’s most unequal societies with more billionaires and millionares than parallel advanced countries in Western Europe and North America. Business and popular media continue to publish various surveys depicting the widening gap between financial and banking billionares on the one hand and the stagnating middle class on the other. The “too big to fail” American banking crises of 2007-2009 became a wake up call.

More than ever there has become awareness of the dangers of what John Le Carre, the spy novelist has termed The Deep State behind Britain’s commanding heights of London’s grip over industrial, industrial and banking industries and the cultural and social elite hold over them.

The power of the American deep state pervades over the national security agencies, the Pentagon, the CIA , Homeland Security, the State Department, the Treasury Department and Wall Street lawyers and lobbists. The seamless web of national security and many banking and finance committees in the US Congress have raised concern among right and left wing members such as Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Elizabeth Warren warned of the imperative to rein in the overwhelming power of money and business affecting the quality of American democracy.

Elected members of the House, the Senate and the Judiciary–may yet assert themselves to make American democracy really work for the struggling working class, not just for othe wine and cheesupper leisure class. President Obama has often talked about the dangers of rising inequality in America. But so far he has not commented directly about the dangers of America imperiled by the shadow government lurking behind of the town halls and cities throughout America that Eisenhower warned about.

Categories: Defense

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The Quality of Humility

Posted on June 23, 2013

The Canadian author-historian, Margaret Macmillan, who wrote the seminal work “Paris 1919” on the 6-month long international conference in Versailles at the end of World War I, wrote of a Vietnamese kitchen assistant working at the Ritz Hotel in Paris who unsuccessfully sought to have his country recognized by the great powers among the swirling hustle of the major powers, including France, Britain and the emergent United States. The kitchen assistant, a gangly, thin but determined 28 year old, was Ho Chi Minh, who in September 1945, declared Vietnam independent following the surrender of Japanese forces to the US at Tokyo Bay.

Later, in the 1950s, as French colonial forces sought to regain control over Indo-China, Ho Chi Minh and his “rag tag of black pajama and sandals” guerillas defeated the pride of French intellectual, bureaucratic and military elite at the garrison of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, Ho Chi Min, aided by the military legend, Vo Nguyen Giap, rose to world wide political and military fame. Ho Chi Minh participated in the April 1955 Asian African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, along with Jawarhalal Nehru (India), Zhou Enlai (China) Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), and Sukarno (Indonesia).

ho chi minh & soekarno

In the early 1960s, Ho Chi Minh visited Indonesia and was conferred an honorary doctorate at Bandung. Ho Chi Minh spoke of the most important education he received was not from schools, colleges or universities but from “The School of Life” which tested his determination, resilience and moral strength. Indonesian president Sukarno, who attended the ceremony later spoke to students in Jakarta, which I attended as a second year student at the University of Indonesia. Sukarno spoke warmly about “this simple and humble man who never graduated from college or university” but possessed the determined quality of humanity that conquered the nation whose sin was to remind France to live up to its own commitment to Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite”. I have never forgotten that image of both Ho Chi Minh and Sukarno at that very moving moment of first generation leaders of Vietnam and Indonesia who wrested power rather than being granted independence by a stubborn yet receding colonial power.

I have often wondered how third and fourth generation Vietnamese, Indonesian,
and indeed African and Latin American, European and American leaders view the historical spectrum facing each country’s current predicament? Can they recapture the spirit that once moved their forbears into bring out the best of their intellectual courage and moral fibre to the fore? Can and will they reinvigorate the quality of public service in their personal, social and professional conduct as leaders? Can they withstand the forces of predatory financial power that erodes their determination to maintain political and cultural space that underlies the power of humility? Will they heed John F Kennedy’s call in his inaugural address more than 50 years ago that “those who do not allow peaceful revolution possible will make violent revolution inevitable?”

Categories: International, Nation

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Reading: China Goes Global

Posted on June 5, 2013

David Shambaugh’s new book “China Goes Global” sheds light on the difference between being “the Second Largest Economy” and being ” the Second Strongest economy.” The second largest economy doesn’t necessarily have the second largest influential economy. China like most developing also has one of the world’s most unequal economies such as India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia.

It also faces the problem of urban rural drive, exacerbated by issues like Tibet, Xinjiang and the hinterland away from China’s eastern seaboard. In short, domestic performance counts. It will take another generation before China becomes a truly comprehensive power. Until then, it very much remains a regional power.

Categories: Development, International

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