[lbo-talk] Developments in the world economy and the concept offoreign ownership

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 5/27/07, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> >
> >... It makes me wonder who really drove all
> >that inter-imperialist war in the 19th and early 20th centuries. My
> >pal who's doing a diss on the City of London says the City didn't
> >want WW I - the politicians did. The City was making too much money
> >floating securities for Germany. More recently, I don't think it was
> >even the oil industry that pushed for the invasion of Iraq; that came
> >from politicians and right-wing intellectuals. Now they may have a
> >"better" grasp of the long-term interest of capital than the
> >capitalists themselves, but a lot of capitalists just prefer the
> >status quo to something as risky as war.
>
> I think the stereotypical image of there being a strong affinity between
> capitalists and militarists is way off the mark.  Wheeler-dealers are
> classic appeasers -- witness Joe Kennedy Sr.  They believe in the power of
> the dollar, not the gun, and figure why use violence when you can cut a deal
> -- there's plenty in it for everyone.  That's why I think it's ludicrous to
> propose the Iraq invasion was "about oil."  The major US oil companies did
> just fine for decades in the Mideast by brandishing dollars not armored
> artillery -- what strategic sense did it make for them to get rid of the
> smooth, discreet, no-risk, low-cost, dollar-diplomacy that had successfully
> powered the global oil trade for generations, in favor of the high-cost,
> reckless, smash-and-grab approach to oil sourcing represented by the Iraq
> invasion?  Business people might like military metaphors, but they do not
> like military methods.

Why don't business people stop the White House from using military
methods, then?
-- 
Yoshie