Last Monday the Washington Times offered us the following headline: “Financial terrorism suspected in 2008 economic crash.” The story refers to a Pentagon contractor's report, titled “Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses." The report suggests that unknown parties covertly exploited vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system to help trigger a crash as part of a three-phase process which is yet underway. The report admits that contributing factors, such as high-risk mortgage lending and poor federal regulation, were at work. Nonetheless, the report says there is evidence that foreign agencies have also been at work, attempting to magnify U.S. economic difficulties. Supposedly, what the U.S. faced in 2008 was a “normal downturn” which should not have grown into a “near collapse” of the financial system. According to the report, some foreign agency was giving the U.S. financial system a stiff push toward the abyss: “The preponderance of evidence that cannot be easily dismissed demands a thorough and immediate study.... Ignoring the likelihood of this very real threat ensures a catastrophic event.”
Readers may view much of this evidence at GlobalEconomicWarfare.com, which is the Website of the author of the Pentagon's "Economic Warfare" report, Kevin Freeman. One of the questions Freeman asks is, "What role, if any, is economic warfare playing in destabilizing Egypt?" (Hasn't there been "monkey business," of late, with Russian, Kazakh and Ukrainian grain?) Freeman's Pentagon report alleges that financial terrorism may have caused as much as $50 trillion in losses. Among those suspected of being behind such an attack: (1) structures of the “former” KGB in Russia; (2) radical Islamists; (3) and China.
Is there any merit to such claims? If we examine the defector literature (from the "former" Soviet Union) we find numerous references to future economic warfare, especially in the context of a long range Soviet bloc strategy. In 1982 the high-level Czech defector, Jan Sejna, emphasized the role of future economic strictures in destabilizing the United States (after the "controlled" collapse of the Warsaw Pact). In 1984 KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn wrote of a long range Soviet strategy to flip the global balance of power, warning his American readers to "beware the economic weapons of the [socialist] bloc, grain and oil."
The subject of economic warfare against the U.S., says Freeman, cries out for further investigation. Will the public, or Congress, demand a full investigation? Not likely. The political side of the Pentagon, represented by Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael G. Vickers, wants to downplay the validity of the “Economic Warfare” report. As noted by the Times, Vickers has already blocked further study of the question. This is not too surprising, since any official admission that foreign enemies are engaging in “economic warfare” is not acceptable to leading politicians. Given the ruling passion for all-encompassing trust, nuclear disarmament and appeasement, how would the White House (for example) deal with the concept of foreign economic terrorism aimed at the United States?
Today’s politician, whether he is a president or an assistant defense secretary, is a creature of acceptance, trust, and many utopian conceits. Non-acceptance, distrust, and talk of enemies would unravel the stock and trade of such politicians. In the official lexicon, trade with China is not a moral problem involving questionable compromises in dealing with a totalitarian state, but an opportunity to make money while spreading the capitalist message of “win-win.” The political climate engendered by this mentality is one of carefully cultivated self-deception, a degraded intellectual integrity, with economic optimism in place of retaliatory vigilance.
As a matter of course, America seems unable to escape calamity. Misplaced idealism, mixed with profit-taking and apathy, draws Washington step-by-step closer to disaster. If Freeman is right, the “former” enemies of capitalism may now be able to destroy capitalism through the free market itself. The enemies of democracy may now cloak themselves in democratic and capitalist slogans. As Andrei Navrozov explained many years ago, ours is the era of “totalitarianism with a human face.” It is Lenin’s New Economic Policy on a grand scale. The studied ignorance of our policy-makers is a rock-bottom precondition for the success of such a strategy (which defectors warned us against). As for the financial sector, who would dare suggest that in our trade with "former" enemies we have admitted a Trojan Horse inside our financial walls? Like the Trojans, we celebrate the entrance of the horse, supposing it signifies our victory when, in fact, it is the instrument of our undoing.
According to Freeman's “Economic Warfare” report, financial subversion against the United States is ongoing. We have already experienced the first two stages of an attack that was carried out between 2007 and 2009. The third and final stage may already be underway. The first phase involved a manipulation of oil prices in the year leading up to the 2008 crash. The second phase took the form of a “bear raid” from unidentified attackers against key Wall Street firms. The resulting aftermath produced massive government spending along with an expansion of public debt. The entire process, as it unfolds, leads us step-by-step to the elimination of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. This, in turn, promises to erode U.S. military power through the attenuation of the Pentagon's budget. The stage is then set for an international reversal; namely, the emergence of Russia and China as hegemonic powers able to dictate terms to the rest of the world.
The three-stage attack on the U.S. dollar outlined above is part of something I have previously called "the Sequence." This column has mentioned "the Sequence" before and will doubtless touch upon it again.
