War Threat Rises As US Economy Declines (Source globalresearch.ca) Washington is now committed to blocking the rise of two large nuclear-armed countries. This commitment is the reason for the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine and for its use as anti-Russian propaganda. China is now confronted with the Pivot to Asia and the construction of new US naval and air bases to ensure Washington’s control of the South China Sea, now defined as an area of American National Interests. 9/11 served to launch the neoconservatives’ war for hegemony in the Middle East. 9/11 also served to launch the domestic police state. While civil liberties have shriveled at home, the US has been at war for almost the entirety of the 21st century, wars that have cost us, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, at least $6 trillion dollars. These wars have gone very badly. They have destabilized governments in an important energy producing area. And the wars have vastly multiplied the “terrorists,” the quelling of which was the official reason for the wars. Just as the Soviet collapse unleashed US hegemony, it gave rise to jobs offshoring. The Soviet collapse convinced China and India to open their massive underutilized labor markets to US capital. US corporations, with any reluctant ones pushed by large retailers and Wall Street’s threat of financing takeovers, moved manufacturing, industrial, and tradable professional service jobs, such as software engineering, abroad. This decimated the American middle class and removed ladders of upward mobility. US GDP and tax base moved with the jobs to China and India. US real median family incomes ceased to grow and declined. Without income growth to drive the economy, Alan Greenspan resorted to an expansion of consumer debt, which has run its course. Currently there is nothing to drive the economy. On the economic scene the dollar as reserve currency is a problem for the entire world. Sanctions and other forms of American financial imperialism are causing countries, including very large ones, to leave the dollar payments system. As foreign trade is increasingly conducted without recourse to the US dollar, the demand for dollars drops, but the supply has been greatly expanded as a result of Quantitative Easing. Because of offshored production and US dependence on imports, a drop in the dollar’s exchange value would result in domestic inflation, further lowering US living standards and threatening the rigged, stock, bond, and precious metal markets. The evidence is clear that there has been no economic recovery. With the first quarter GDP negative and the second quarter likely to be negative as well, the second-leg of the long downturn could begin this summer.