June 25, 2008 (LPAC)--Le Monde yesterday carries a remarkable article by the EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson--whom Nicolas Sarkozy accused just recently of being responsible for the Irish "no" vote on the fascist Lisbon Treaty, because of his policies for unbridled free trade.

 

Right from the beginning Mandelson situates the debate in the context of the U.S. Presidential election: "Only two candidates left.... Whoever is going to win, he will be the first President whose foreign economic policy will be dominated, from the start, by a fundamental shift of economic power from the West toward the East and the South."

Mandelson gets then quickly to the point: "The protectionist rhetoric and the violent criticism of international trade that we heard during the primaries indicates that many Americans consider the evolution of world economy as a null sum game."

For Mandelson, Americans -- and Europeans -- are no longer the craftsmen of globalization but only spectators, and globalization, despite having had negative effects, remains the main guarantor of world stability: "Only stable states, able to cooperate, can face pressures which are going to be exerted on resources such as energy, food and water. For 60 years, the United States sustained the development of international markets through its own openness. An American crisis of confidence toward globalization could jeopardize it."

In Mandelson's imperial schemes, the development of China and India as export superpowers is not a problem as long as we continue to invest in "competitive economics and exploit our comparative advantages."

Later on, he fixes the new mission of the United States and the EU as "renovating the global institutions which are necessary to ensure the unity of this new complex ensemble of countries," such as such as the UNO, the WTO and the IMF.

Then, comes an attack on economic nationalism which he says is "a symptom of something far deeper. We cannot attack globalization without ourselves attacking the primary causes of protectionism.... If we want our economies to remain open, we must define a new social contract that protects us from economic insecurity and inequalities within our own societies.

"The idea of the incompatibility between globalization and state intervention in the domain of social protection is a political myth which is long-lived, especially in the U.S.A."

He then cites OECD studies ostensibly showing that state intervention on behalf of labor market flexibility, higher education, aid women and seniors to remain in the workforce are better armed than others to face globalization. He points, naturally, to the Scandinavian nations, as exemplars, and that Scandinavian citizens are more favorable toward globalization than Americans. Hence, he twists entirely the intention of the New Deal, saying that "those who defend social progress honor the arguments of the New Deal which militates that governments should aid citizens to spread out into the open economies, rather than leaving them defenseless to face them.

"States that protect their citizens must not, therefore, be protectionist."

In other words: with a world situation that threatens to explode at any moment and to prevent protectionist measures, implement a New Deal without Roosevelt and redesign the British Imperial plan.