Exposing US-Funded "NGOs"

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or ‘Doctors Without Borders’ is another NGO that seems to have departed from its original cause.
It seems now to be completely under the French Government and acts as an arm of its foreign policy.
It is invariably their facilities that get bombed.
Do they deliberately adopt policies which ensure they get bombed?
If “Yes”, it is highly unfair on their volunteers who do not understand how they are being used in this way.
Unless – that is – their volunteers do understand how they are being used and are foolish enough to go along with it?

Religious organisations fulfill a largely similar role.
Both Russia and China have imposed controls on them as well.
Now, the “civilised” countries in North America and Western Europe need to do the same.

Many if not most Americans have always been in denial about the imperial ambitions and practise of the US. There are honourable exceptions – Noam Chomsky comes immediately to mind – but on the whole the motives of US foreign policy have been regarded by the US public as being conceived in good faith and benign in intent. This America qua global good-guy was very well illustrated in Graham Greene’s novel – and subsequently to motion pictures – ”The Quiet American” set against the background of the first Indo-China war. One of the central characters, Alden Pyle, the ostensibly idealistic young American Aid Worker, presents himself as a proto third-way reformist opposed to the excesses of French colonialism on the one hand, and Chinese Communism on the other. He is in fact nothing of the sort and his motives are soon uncovered by the cynical, world weary British journalist. Thomas Fowler. Under the cover of and aid NGO, Pyle was working for the CIA all along.
Thus US imperialism is the theory and practise which dare not speak its name. In the third world, however, and increasingly in the developed world, the facts are plain for all but the ideologically purblind. The US, particularly since the neo-conservative ascendancy, is a rampaging imperial juggernaut, with a blatant empire-building agenda. The US imperial project was from 1945 onwards held in check by social democratic obstacles in western Europe, the existence of the Soviet and East Asian Communist bloc and national anti-colonialist movements in the south. But with the collapse of communism, the ongoing enervation and retreat of social democracy and the stalling of the anti-colonial struggle in the south the rapacious beast of American imperialism has been let of the leash. Moreover the US has made it perfectly clear that it will not tolerate the reconstitution of any economic or military power capable of challenging its global domination To this end it has given itself the right to wage ‘preventive wars’ against those who may in sometime in the future threaten its global ambitions. The global system is unipolar and the Americans are determined to keep it that way.
This project is assuredly not lacking in ambition. It aims at extending the ‘Monroe Doctrine’ to the whole planet; the establishment of a sort of US global suzerainty. This would be difficult for the US to accomplish alone – it therefore has to form alliances and spheres of influence with other (subaltern) partners in the developed world. Roughly speaking the geopolitical configuration for America’s global project is as follows.
‘’The phase of the (present) global development of capitalism … is characterised by the emergence of a collective imperialism. The ‘’triad’’ – that is, the US, plus its Canadian external province, Europe west of the Polish frontier and Japan, to which we should add Australia and New Zealand defines the area of this collective imperialism. It ‘’manages’’ the economic dimension of capitalist globalization and the political military dimension through NATO, whose responsibilities have been redefined so that in effect it can substitute itself for the United Nations.’’ (Samir Amin)
This requires some skilful diplomatic balancing between the US and its junior partners – particularly within the EU, where conflict between European states and the US is always a possibility. To this end the mobilization of various euro-quisling elites – the UK, Poland, and the ‘new’ Europe – are vital for America’s policy of divide and rule in this area. Moreover the globalization agenda (the economic prong in the US global offensive) has become the received wisdom in the EU. As for the Euro it has become a satellite currency of the dollar, although it is in fact a stronger currency since it is based upon a euro economy which runs persistent trade surpluses.
Thus the EU – with the possible exception of France – meekly follows in the wake of the US hegemon ensnared in an Atlanticist doctrine for which the raison d’etre – if there ever was one – definitively ended with the cold war. And the world pays a heavy price for this. According to Amin:
‘‘The US economy lives as a parasite off its partners in the global system, with virtually no national savings of its own. The world produces while North America consumes … The fact is that the bulk of the American deficit (on Federal and Current Account) is covered by capital inputs from Europe and Japan, China and the South, rich oil-producing and comprador classes from all regions in the Third World – to which should be added the debt service levy that is imposed on nearly every country in the periphery of the global system. The American superpower depends from day to day on the flow of capital that sustains the parasitism of its economy and society.’’ (Amin Ibid)
It is not generally known that the US with its chronic federal and trade deficits is actually on the brink of technical bankruptcy, particularly when long term commitments on Medicaid, Medicare and social security payments are factored into the calculations. According to research carried out by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve, Fed liabilities come to a staggering $70 trillion – this is roughly 5 times the size of the US GDP.
Against this backdrop the foreign policy of the US becomes clear. Its purpose is loot pure and simple. The south must continue to be plundered for cheap inputs and raw materials and in order to do this comprador elites must be promoted who are friendly to US interests. Economic development of course cannot take place in this context as there will be an outflow of capital from south to North. Markets must be opened up to the rapacious incursions of US and other western capitals. Possible rivals – Russia, China – must be regarded as long term enemies and will be divided and marginalised or possibly in 1970s geopolitical jargon ‘Finlandised’. And uppity allies in Europe – like France – must be brought to heel.
Of course this has and will continue to be met with stiff resistance. Most of this has been spontaneous and centred around the crisis in the Middle East, South West Asia and the growing opposition to the reputedly Promethean gifts of globalisation.
Amin identifies 4 aspects of a political programme which would give organizational coherence to this opposition. ‘’(1) A campaign against all American ‘preventive’ wars and for the closure of all foreign US bases, (2) A campaign of right to access to the land, which is of crucial importance to the world’s 3 billion peasants, (3) A campaign for the regulation of industrial outsourcing, and (4) A cancellation of third world external debts.’’ (Op.cit)
One could of course add more to this – capital controls, global minimum wage and labour standards … and so forth. This would only be a beginning however. Amin himself looks forward to the reconstitution of the UN as a forum where the third world and smaller countries could find voice legitimate voice, as opposed to the dominant institutions of the present – the IMF, WTO, IBRD, and NATO which are frankly little more than instruments of US led Triad collective imperialism.
Get ready for a long haul.