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The Military Occupation of the Middle East and the Crash of 2008

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The Second Cold War

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Abstract

The United States could only maintain the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, two lost wars, because of the funding by such countries as China and Japan, which continued to buy American Treasury bonds. Joseph E. Stiglitz (Nobel Prize in Economics) estimated that the total cost of these two wars ranged from US$ 2.7 trillion in strictly budgetary terms to around US$ 5 trillion in total economic costs. Not without reason, The Economist published an article in its edition of March 27, 2008, entitled “Waiting for Armageddon”, in which it suggested that the increase in bankrupt corporations could be a sign that something much worse was yet ahead.

It was the collapse of the real estate market in the first half of 2007, however, which set the economic and financial crisis in the United States in motion. Major brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers suspended the sale of securities and, in July of the same year, European banks recorded losses with contracts based on subprime mortgages. The default of mortgage loans in the United States made the financial system grind to a halt, affecting loans to companies, credit cards, and so on. Subsequently, in September 2008, the crisis hit the banking sector with the bankruptcy and dissolution of Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank of the United States, which had been in business for 158 years.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ben Piven, “Map: US bases encircle Iran. Dozens of US and allied forces’ military installations dot the region, from Oman, UAE and Kuwait to Turkey and Israel”, Al Jazeera, May 1, 2012.

  2. 2.

    “Global oil companies seek growth in East Africa”, Frontier Market Intelligence, Trade Invest, Africa, November 3, 2011. See also: The theater of war and oil and gas in the Middle East. In: Eric Waddell, The Battle for Oil, Global Research, 2003, in: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-worldwide-network-of-us-military-bases/5564. Accessed 23.03.2015.

  3. 3.

    Ibid., p. 154. Department of Defense, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2003/basestructure2003.pdf, http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/tables/2005/1231militarypersonnel.pdf

  4. 4.

    Ben Piven, “Map: US bases encircle Iran. Dozens of US and allied forces’ military installations dot the region, from Oman, UAE and Kuwait to Turkey and Israel”, Al Jazeera, May 1, 2012.

  5. 5.

    Schwartz (1998, p. 3).

  6. 6.

    Hans M. Kristensen, “U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe—A Review of Post-Cold War Policy, Force Levels, and War Planning”, Natural Resources Defence Council, February 2005, p. 6. “Hundreds of US Nukes Still in Europe”, Deutsche Welle.

  7. 7.

    Heller and Lammerant (2009, pp. 117–118).

  8. 8.

    Hans M. Kristensen, “U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe—A Review of Post-Cold War Policy, Force Levels, and War Planning”, Natural Resources Defence Council, February 2005, p. 9.

  9. 9.

    Markus Becker, “US Nuclear Weapons Upgrades Experts Report Massive Cost Increase”, Spiegel Online, 16/5/2012.

  10. 10.

    Department of Defense, Base Structure Report—FY 2010 Base line. See also: Military presence of the US worldwide. In: http://combatingglobalization.com/articles/combating_globalization4.html. Accessed 24.03.2015.

  11. 11.

    Nick Turse, “America’s Empire of Bases 2.0”, The Nation, 10/1/2011.

  12. 12.

    Weida (1998, p. 524).

  13. 13.

    Ibid., p. 524, n. 10.

  14. 14.

    Atomic Archive, The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, accessed http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp10.shtml

  15. 15.

    U.S. Nuclear Weapon Enduring Stockpile, accessed http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Wpngall.html

  16. 16.

    Stephen I. Schwartz, “The Costs of U.S. Nuclear Weapons”, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies—Monterey Institute for International Studies, October 1, 2008.

  17. 17.

    U.S. Department of State, 2008 Annual Report on Implementation of the Moscow Treaty—Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation (VCI), Washington, DC, May 13, 2008. FAS Strategic Security Blog. Comments and analyses of important national and international security issues, accessed http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2009/02/sort.php. Robert Mcnamara, “Apocalypse Soon”, Foreign Policy, May/June 2005.

  18. 18.

    Schwartz (1998, p. 3).

  19. 19.

    Recent trends in military expenditure, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), accessed http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/resultoutput/trends

  20. 20.

    Murphy (2007, p. 65). See also: Compared military expenditures of the US, China, Russia, France and Great Britain (2011). Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). SIPRI data base 2013. In: http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/recent-trends. Accessed 02.11.2014.

  21. 21.

    Wicht (2011, p. 13).

  22. 22.

    Jeremy Grant, “Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned”, Financial Times, August 14, 2007. James Quinn, “US Economy on a burning platform”, FinnancialPortal.com

  23. 23.

    Ibid.

  24. 24.

    Paul Craig Roberts, “The Collapse of American Power”, CounterPunch, March 18, 2008.

  25. 25.

    “Es sollen keine Staatsschulden bei anderen Staaten gemacht werden. (…)Machthabenden dazu, welche der menschlichen Natur ingeartet zu sein scheint, verbunden, ist also ein großes Hindernis des ewigen Friedens, welches zu verbieten um desto mehr ein Präliminarartikel desselben sein müßte, weil der endlich doch unvermeidliche Staatsbankerott manche andere Staaten unverschuldet in den Schaden mit verwickeln muß, welches eine öffentliche Läsion der letzteren sein würde. Mithin sind wenigstens andere Staaten berechtigt, sich gegen einen solchen und dessen Anmaßungen zu verbünden.” Kant (1947, p. 8).

  26. 26.

    Barnett (1984, p. 14).

  27. 27.

    Ibid., p. 589.

  28. 28.

    Loan and lease program, run since 1941, whereby the United States would supply arms to Britain and other allies in the war against the Axis—Germany, Japan and Italy (1939–1945).

  29. 29.

    Barnett (1984, p. 589).

  30. 30.

    Hobson (1930, pp. 462–463).

  31. 31.

    Ibid., p. 464.

  32. 32.

    Toynbee (1951, pp. 336–359).

  33. 33.

    Arrighi and Silver (2009, p. 250).

  34. 34.

    Bonner and Wiggin (2006, p. 278).

  35. 35.

    Wayne M. Morrison and Marc Labonte, “China’s Holdings of U.S. Securities: Implications for the U.S. Economy”, CSR—Report of the Congress, Congressional Research Service, Order Code RL34314, December 6, 2012. Marina Wentzel, “Reservas da China ultrapassam US$ 2 trilhões”, BBC Brasil, July 15, 2009.

  36. 36.

    “S&P rebaixa nota da dívida americana para AA+”, Folha de S. Paulo, 5/8/2011.

  37. 37.

    “Bankruptcies in America—Waiting for Armageddon”, The Economist, Mar 27, 2008.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., p. 20 and 188.

  39. 39.

    The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, Pursuant to Public Law 111, 21 January 2011, Washington, Official Government Edition, p. XII.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., p. 23.

  41. 41.

    Berman (2012, p. 53).

  42. 42.

    Apud Milnes (2012, p. XXII).

  43. 43.

    Ibid., p. 27.

  44. 44.

    Berman (2012, p. 64).

  45. 45.

    Sorkin (2009, p. 534).

  46. 46.

    Ibid., p. 538.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., p. 545.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., p. 252.

  49. 49.

    U.S. Department of Treasury, Treasury International Capital System, U.S. Gross External Debt, http://www.treas.gov/tic/external-debt.html

  50. 50.

    The CIA—World Factbook, accessed https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

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  1. Emeritus professor for History, University of Brasília, St. Leon-Rot, Germany

    Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira

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Moniz Bandeira, L.A. (2017). The Military Occupation of the Middle East and the Crash of 2008. In: The Second Cold War. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54888-3_8

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