Instead of using words to describe reality, we sometimes use words to fool ourselves about reality. Often, when we want to fool ourselves, we put the word "new" in front of something that is actually quite old. The "New Economy" is one example. The "New World Order" is another. Of course, there are "new" things in the world; but order and economy are not among them. Order and economy shall be what they have always been: that is, troubled by cycles of boom and bust, war and peace, progress and decadence. One often hears of "the human condition" with its frailties and its tendency to take wrong turns. What is true for individuals, in this case, is true for society in general. There is no cure for being human.
Those who believed in the "New Economy" are psychologically the same as those who believed (and still believe) in the "New World Order." It is no coincidence that the two slogans occurred in the same decade, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The "New Economy" meant the Dow would climb to 35,000. It meant boom without bust. What else could it have meant? All sunshine and no rain was the forecast. Those who spoke of the inevitability of storms were "pessimists." At the same time the term "New World Order," as used by President George H. W. Bush, meant a world with only one superpower - America. It meant that World War III, fought with nuclear weapons, was not going to happen after all. "Our children can sleep at night, free from fear," etc., etc. It meant that Communism was no longer a specter haunting Europe, Asia, Africa and the Western Hemisphere. The United States had won the Cold War. It was a new game. It was a new era of free trade and open markets. Ergo, the "New Economy."
Unfortunately the words "New Economy" and "New World Order" do not describe the economy or the world. Instead, these words indicate a delusional tendency. Those who uttered the phrase "New Economy" in 1999 or "New World Order" in 1992 only demonstrated their own foolishness and lack of historical sense. There is no "New Economy" and there is no "New World Order." It is the same old economy in the same old world, with one difference: major players in the economic game and the geo-strategic game wanted to fool themselves because it felt so good. But the laws of political economy have not been suspended. The ABC's of markets, of credit and debt, of supply and demand, are still in effect. In the geo-strategic sphere power politics, war and intrigue continue as before. The struggle for world dominance has not ended. Russia's missiles remain targeted on America. And now terrorists, supported by states whose supply lines trace back to Moscow and Beijing, have attacked and killed thousands of Americans. Yet, even now, delusional optimism refuses to add two and two together.
According to the GAO report, "Impact of Terrorist Attacks on the World Trade Center," (GAO-02-700R), "The attacks on the two World Trade Center buildings cost about $83 billion (in 2001 dollars) in total losses." The report further states, "The study by the Milken Institute ... estimated that for 2001 alone, the economy of New York-New Jersey metropolitan area sustained income losses of about $2.7 billion, while all the metropolitan areas in the country sustained losses of about $191 billion."
The vulnerability of the United States, of the "New Economy" and the "New World order," should be apparent. Yet even as these words are written, America's borders remain open, mass illegal immigration continues unchecked. Homeland security may have accomplished some effective measures, but the enemy can circumvent these measures.
In the late 1980s we all listened hopefully to the nice words of Mikhail Gorbachev. In late 1989 we saw the Warsaw Pact collapse on the evening news. Country after country left the shattered Communist empire. We saw the attempted coup in Moscow engineered by "incompetent" hardliners. We saw the Soviet Union dissolve into the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Reality must not be mistaken for superficial appearances. Sound bites on the evening news are no substitute for the fact that in country after country, the secret police files of the new rulers were sealed. With their diminished attention span, the Western audience did not stay tuned for the rest of the story. They did not realize how freedom and democracy were sabotaged in Eastern Europe and Russia from the start. They never suspected that the secret police of the "former" communist states had gone underground, maintaining control through mafias and other informal networks. When NATO representatives went to Russia more than a decade ago to supervise the return of the last political prisoners, it was announced with great fanfare. But when the NATO representatives came back empty-handed, without seeing a single political prisoner released, the media forgot to cover it. After all, the story did not make much sense. At least, it would not make sense to those who were already committed to believing in the "New Economy" and the "New World Order."
While the United States disarmed at breakneck speed, Russia did not stop preparing for a future world war. It continued to violate nearly all of its arms control agreements. Even now Russian officials make excuses to delay the elimination of 44,000 tons of chemical munitions while balking the elimination of ICBMs as mandated by treaty commitments. In the mid-1990s defectors from the Soviet biological weapons project told British and U.S. officials that Moscow was working on a super-plague weapon. This was four years after Russian President Boris Yeltsin promised that he would finally put an end to Russia's germ warfare program. Yeltsin also promised that Russia would stop building submarines. But Russia is still building submarines.
Similarly, after the Russian president admitted that American POWs had been moved to Russia during the Vietnam War, Moscow back-pedaled as the architects of the "New World Order" facilitated this back-pedaling. He didn't really say it! The translation was wrong! Some things must be kept in the shadows. The fact that Americans captured in Vietnam were shipped to Russia and used for medical experiments might put a crack in the "New Economy." It might have ruined the "New World Order."
America gave Russia nearly a billion dollars to facilitate the disassembly of nuclear warheads. Some experts believe the Russians used the money to modernize their warhead production facilities. In 1998 the New York Times reported that the exact size of Russia's nuclear arsenal remained a mystery. In his 1997 book, "The ABM Treaty Charade," former DIA and CIA analyst William T. Lee reported that the U.S. had long "persisted in the naïve belief that its satellites could verify all agreements and Treaties." In terms of masking its war preparations through the 1990s, Russia spent billions expanding its underground cities. One of them, located under Yamantau Mountain in the Urals, goes down more than 1,000 feet and contains a space equal to metropolitan Washington. How does a bankrupt, poverty-stricken country afford such a project? Even more to the point, why does Russia need a nuclear-proof city if the Cold War ended in 1991? Why does Russia need state-of-the-art road mobile ICBM like the SS-27? The United States, on its side, doesn't possess weapons as sophisticated as this!
Some authorities believe that Russia's underground cities house secret nuclear weapon and missile production facilities. After commenting on the complimentary role of U.S. "self delusion" and Russian "deception efforts," former DIA analyst Lee noted: "The Soviets certainly produced enough fissionable materials to [make] 45-60,000 nuclear warheads, and probably a lot more." The Russia shell game is so sophisticated that American officials remain in the dark. Yet we are asked to believe that this tight security, which prevents U.S. intelligence from getting an accurate warhead count, is nonetheless slipshod enough to be penetrated by foreign terrorists.
According to a 1992 report submitted to Congress by President George H. W. Bush on Russian noncompliance with arms control treaties, "Soviet violations of major arms control treaties and agreements ... included the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, SALT I and II, the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons, the Helsinki Final Act, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Past evidence suggested that the Soviet Union also violated the Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT)."
If President George W. Bush were obliged to produce a report on Russian compliance since 1992, it would tell a similar tale. At unguarded moments the Russians have admitted that they had between 45,000 to 60,000 nuclear warheads in their stockpile. According to William Lee, "the Russians inherited [from the Soviet Union] large stocks of reserve (refire) missiles and warheads that were not accountable under the SALT II Treaty." Lee also stated, "The U.S. does not know either the size or the locations of these stocks. CIA/DIA covered up the discrepancies in missile stocks in the Soviet START II declarations...."
In order to advance the cause of self deception, to preserve the cocoon of illusion known as the "New Economy" and the "New World Order," intelligence officials explained away the facts. In his book, Lee explained: "Under START I the Russians partially dismantled the warheads from decommissioned missiles, i.e., separated the fuses and other electronics from the fissionable materials, but have not destroyed any." Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A., the warheads dismantled a decade ago are gone for good. "Despite appropriations of several hundred million dollars under the Nunn-Lugar law, not a single [Russian] nuclear warhead has been destroyed with these funds," wrote former DIA analyst Lee in 1997. "[Russia] produced and stocked (at least) 50 to 100 percent more nuclear warheads than the U.S. estimated, and the U.S. does not know where those warheads are stored."
As these words are written, the optimism that fueled the "New Economy" lies huddled, battered and beaten. For three years the market has fallen. The false economic promises of the 1990s are now apparent. But the false promise of the "New World Order" remains.
On October 12 Russia's strategic nuclear forces practiced a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Russia's strategic nuclear forces test-launched missiles from submarines, bombers and ground-based ICBMs. According to Dmitry Litovkin of Izvestia, all these launches were meant to demonstrate Russia's "ability ... to prevent the escalation of an armed aggression against Russia, including with the use of nuclear weapons."
Who would commit armed aggression against Russia? Why would this aggression require a nuclear response? Certainly the Chinese are not the enemy. The Russians are doing everything they can to upgrade China's nuclear capability, which is largely aimed at the United States and India. "The new Russian military doctrine stipulates this scenario," explained Litovkin. "Russia ... will never again ... use conventional forces for the sake of coping with aggression on the part of NATO-type blocs...." According to Russian military doctrine the next major war will be a nuclear war. The Izvestia writer continued, "Our generals are scared stiff of a possible global war." Two lines later he added, "This implies war games in order to intimidate theoretical enemies...."
Is the "theoretical enemy" intimidated?
Far from being intimidated, the United States is oblivious. The "New World Order" blinds our leaders to reality. We are the world's leader. We are the only superpower. Meanwhile, the U.S. copes with the prospect of nuclear and biological terrorism. Our eye is not on Russia or Russian war preparations. We cling to the "New World Order," to the idea that Russia is a pro-Western democracy.
Does anyone still think the Dow is going to 3500?
