From: "Mark Jones" <jones118 at lineone.net>
Doug Henwood wrote:
> So where do you detect this U.S. opposition?
>
Yes, they spoke like that, but they always meant something different and the whole postwar history of German-US trade relations, f.i., has been about Germany resisting dollar hegemony by embracing the path of a strong currency, internal deflation + a relentless search for higher productivity to compensate for high currency values and make exports possible without succumbing to the lure of inflationary devaluation: they used US pressure of competitive devaluations in the 1970s especially, to drive forward their own manufacturing and technological base, and quite successfully until recently, enough to keep the social market more or less intact anyway. US propaganda for open markets, integration etc has always been only the lying character-mask for the equal and opposite search by the US for renewed and sustained hegemony *even when falling dollar values lent some psychological credence to expressed fears of Euro-competition* and *even when, as now in the opposite case, high dollar rates result in high US deficits*. If this were not so, if US open-markets rhetoric meant ONLY what was written on its face, then the US would warmly embrace whatever feeble Euro initiatives there have been from time to time to create independent Euro armed forces, foreign policy etc. But they have done the opposite, and used the British trojan horse to assist them in dishing any attempts at Euro autonomy. And of course, without the integration of 'the vertical' as the Russians like to say, meaning creation of a strong militarised state, then Euroland can only continue to be what it now is, and what US policy wants it to be, however much they protest something else - weak, divided, incapable of embracing the blairite project for structural reforms except in a half-baked way which will not threaten the existing order. US imperialism is quite tricky and devious, yes?
I'm not posting this from my subbed address so it will no doubt bounce.
Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList