[lbo-talk] The Idea of the Third World (was Re: Iran and Latin America)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 10/1/07, dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> On Mon, October 1, 2007 8:51 am, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > But the NAM itself won't be the main medium through which building
> > blocks for checking US hegemony can be built.
>
> What hegemony? This is a serious question. That $770 billion-sized
> military has utterly failed to colonize tiny Iraq, gutted by a decade of
> sanctions. The US has fallen behind 30 to 40 countries in quality of life
> indicators ranging from life expectancy to infant mortality. The US
> current account deficit is 7% of GDP and its net international investment
> position is minus 35% of GDP.

To take the most obvious example, if the US had already totally lost
its hegemony, Iran would not have become an object of international
sanctions, which Washington has been gradually expanding and
intensifying, formally and informally.

The threat to deny access to the US financial system so far appears to
work better than the formal sanctions decided upon at the UNSC, both
of which Ulhas here has been tracking assiduously.

That Washington has not been able to sanction Iran as much as and as
fast as it wished to do so, however, is a sign of its eroding
hegemony.

That is why we live in very interesting times.
-- 
Yoshie