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banking services chronicle login published this article  Empirebuilding and foreign aggression Its neighbors always perceived the United States as an imminent security risk ask Mexico half of whose territory was captured by successive and aggressive American administrations. The two world wars transformed the USA into a global threat able and only too willing to project power to protect its interests and disseminate its brand of missionary liberalcapitalism. In the last 150 years the USA has repeatedly militarily attacked unprovoked other peaceful or pacified nations near and far. To further its often economic ends the United States has not refrained from encouraging and using terrorism in various parts of the globe. It has developed and deployed weapons of mass destruction and is still the biggest arms manufacturer and trader in the world. It has repeatedly reneged on its international obligations and breached international laws and conventions. II. Dysfunctional institutions Hurricane Katrina AugustSeptember 2005 exposed the frailty and lack of preparedness of FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency and to some extent the National Guard. It brought into sharp relief the cancerous politicization of the cronyinfested federal government. FEMA is only the latest in a long chain of failed institutions. The SEC Securities and Exchange Commission coped poorly with virulent corruption and malfeasance in Wall Street. The FDA Food and Drug Administration capitulated in the face of commercial and political pressures and neglected to remove from the market malfunctioning medical devices and drugs with lethal side effects. The EPA Environmental Protection Agency has sacrificed Americas nature reserves to business interests. A heavily politicized Supreme Court legitimized manifestly tainted election results and made a president out of the loser of the popular vote. The disenfranchisement of minorities the poor and exconvicts is now in full swing. The legislature  the two houses of Congress  are deadlocked and paralyzed. The organs of the government of the United States now function only when exposed to acute embarrassment and a revolted public opinion. Private firms and charities sprout to fulfill the gaps. III. The National Consensus Americans long mistook the institutional stability of their political system guaranteed by the Constitution for a national consensus. They actually believe that the former guarantees the latter  that institutional firmness and durability ARE the national consensus. The reverse as we know is true it takes a national consensus to yield stable institutions. No social structure  no matter how venerable and veteran  can resist the winds of change in public sentiment. Hurricane Katrina again demonstrated the unbridgeable divides in American society between rich and poor and black and white. But this time the rift runs deeper. The Bush administration is the first since the Civil War to dare to change the fundamental rules of the political game for instance by seeking to abolish the filibuster in the Senate and by a profligacy of recess appointments of judges and officials. Its instincts and reflexes are elitist undemocratic and violent. It is delusional and its brand of fanatic religiosity is not wellreceived even among the majority of Americans who are believers. Additionally it is openly and unabashedly corrupt and ridden with nepotism and cronyism. Yet Bush unlike Nixon is not an aberration. He is unlikely to be impeached. He was overwhelmingly reelected even as his quagmire war in Iraq unraveled and the selfenrichment and paranoia of his close circle became public. This is the new and true face of at least half of America to the horror and dismay of the other half its liberals. If the history of the United States is any judge these two camps are unlikely to sit back and navelgaze. Semifailed states typically disintegrate. A bloodied perhaps even nuclear second civil war is in the cards. Should the United States devolve into its constituent states the world will breathe a sigh of relief. A European Union EUlike economic zone between the parts of the former USA is bound to be far more pacific and to contribute to world stability  something its malignant former incarnation had so signally failed to do. banking services chronicle latest