In the final analysis, the global empire depends to a large extent on the fact that the dollar acts as the standard world currency, and that the United States Mint has the right to print those dollars. Thus, we make loans to countries like Ecuador with the full knowledge that they will never repay them; in fact, we do not want them to honor their debts, since the nonpayment is what gives us our leverage, our pound of flesh. Under normal conditions, we would run the risk of eventually decimating our own funds; after all, no creditor can afford too many defaulted loans. However, ours are not normal circumstances. The United States prints currency that is not backed by gold. Indeed, it is not backed by anything other than a general worldwide confidence in our economy and our ability to marshal the forces and resources of the empire we have created to support us.
The ability to print currency gives us immense power. It means, among other things, that we can continue to make loans that will never be repaid — and that we ourselves can accumulate huge debts. By the beginning of 2003, the United States’ national debt exceeded a staggering $6 trillion and was projected to reach $7 trillion before the end of the year — roughly $24,000 for each U.S. citizen. Much of this debt is owed to Asian countries, particularly to Japan and China, who purchase U.S. Treasury securities (essentially, IOUs) with funds accumulated through sales of consumer goods — including electronics, computers, automobiles, appliances, and clothing goods — to the United States and the worldwide market.1
As long as the world accepts the dollar as its standard currency, this excessive debt does not pose a serious obstacle to the corporatocracy. However, if another currency should come along to replace the dollar, and if some of the United States’ creditors (Japan or China, for example) should decide to call in their debts, the situation would change drastically. The United States would suddenly find itself in a most precarious situation.
In fact, today the existence of such a currency is no longer hypothetical; the euro entered the international financial scene on January 1, 2002 and is growing in prestige and power with every passing month. The euro offers an unusual opportunity for OPEC, if it chooses to retaliate for the Iraq invasion, or if for any other reason it decides to flex its muscles against the United States. A decision by OPEC to substitute the euro for the dollar as its standard currency would shake the empire to its very foundations. If that were to happen, and if one or two major creditors were to demand that we repay our debts in euros, the impact would be enormous.
I had these things on my mind on the morning of Good Friday, April 18, 2003, as I walked the short distance from my house to the converted garage that serves as my office, sat down at the desk, turned on the computer, and as usual, went to the New York Times Web site. The headline leaped out at me; it immediately transported me from my thoughts about the new realities of international finance, the national debt, and euros back to that of my old profession: “U.S. Gives Bechtel a Major Contract in Rebuilding Iraq.”
The article stated, “The Bush administration awarded the Bechtel Group of San Francisco the first major contract today in a vast reconstruction plan for Iraq.” Farther down the page, the authors informed readers that “The Iraqis will then work with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, institutions in which the United States enjoys wide influence, to reshape the country.”2
Wide influence! There was an understatement.
I linked to another Times article, “Company Has Ties in Washington, and to Iraq.” I skipped through the first several paragraphs, which repeated much of the information from the previous article, and came to:
Bechtel has longstanding ties to the national security establishment… One director is George P. Shultz, who was secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan. Before joining the Reagan administration, Mr. Shultz, who also serves as a senior counselor to Bechtel, was the company’s president, working alongside Caspar W. Weinberger, who served as an executive at the San Francisco-based company before his appointment as defense secretary. This year, President Bush appointed Bechtel’s chief executive, Riley P. Bechtel, to serve on the President’s Export Council.3
Here in these articles was the story of modern history, the drive to global empire, in a nutshell. What was going on in Iraq and described in the morning press was the result of the work Claudine had trained me to do some thirty-five years before, and of the work of other men and women who shared a lust for self-aggrandizement not unlike the one I had known. It marked the current point of the corporatocracy’s progress along the road to bringing every person in the world under its influence.
These articles were about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and about the contracts now being signed, both to rebuild that country from the wreckage created by our military and to build anew in the mold of the modern, westernized model. Yet, without saying so, the news of April 18, 2003, also harked back to the early 1970s and the Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair. SAMA and the contracts flowing out of it had established new and irrevocable precedents that allowed — indeed mandated — U.S. engineering and construction companies and the petroleum industry to co-opt the development of a desert kingdom. In the same mighty blow, SAMA established new rules for the global management of petroleum, redefined geopolitics, and forged with the Saudi royal family an alliance that would ensure their hegemony as well as their commitment to playing by our rules.
As I read those articles, I could not help but wonder how many other people knew, as I did, that Saddam would still be in charge if he had played the game as the Saudis had. He would have his missiles and chemical plants; we would have built them for him, and our people would be in charge of upgrading and servicing them. It would be a very sweet deal — even as Saudi Arabia had been.
Until now, the mainstream media had been careful not to publicize this story. But today, here it was. True, it was a mere inkling; the articles were only the meekest ghosts of a summary, yet the story seemed to be emerging. Wondering if the New York Times was taking a maverick stance, I visited the CNN Web site and read, “Bechtel Wins Iraq Contract.” The CNN story was very similar to the one in the Times, except it added,
Several other companies have at various times been reported as possible competitors for the job, either as primary bidders or as parts of teams, including the Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) unit of Halliburton Co. — of which Vice President Dick Cheney once was CEO… [Already] Halliburton has won a contract, which could be worth $7 billion and could last up to two years, to make emergency repairs to Iraq’s oil infrastructure.4
The story of the march to global empire did indeed appear to be leaking out. Not the details, not the fact that it was a tragic story of debt, deception, enslavement, exploitation, and the most blatant grab in history for the hearts, minds, souls, and resources of people around the world. Nothing in these articles hinted that the story of Iraq in 2003 was the continuation of a shameful story. Nor did they disclose that this story, as old as empire, has now taken on new and terrifying dimensions, both because of its magnitude during this time of globalization and because of the subtlety with which it is executed. Despite its shortfalls, however, the story did appear to be leaking out, almost reluctantly.
The idea of the reluctant story, leaking out, hit very close to home. It reminded me of my own personal story and of the many years I had postponed telling it. I had known for a very long time that I had a confession to make; still, I postponed making it. Thinking back, I see that my doubts, the whisperings of guilt, were there from the beginning. They had started in Claudine’s apartment, even before I made the commitment to go to Indonesia on that first trip, and they had haunted me almost incessantly all these years.