« BACK TO FORUM
 Author |
 Post
|
 |
|
davyk
Joined: Jul 4, 2007
Posts: 497 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Blabbermouth
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Male & 28
Country: Zimbabwe
Province/State: Harare
City: Harare
|
Zimbabwe has become an unusual threat to the American Foreign policy....!
July 1, 2008 - 03:51 AM
|
|
This March 2005, President Bush reinstated personal sanctions on Mugabe and members of his ruling party because of “the unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.” In January, at her Senate confirmation hearings to be secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice called Zimbabwe an “outpost of tyranny” along with six other nations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13657-2005Mar30.html
No Wonder they poured USD 7million in the opposition coffers for regime change agenda.
Threat to US Foreign policy
Why does the government of the US consider Zimbabwe to pose “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States”? The answer says as much about the foreign policy of the United States as it does about Zimbabwe. The goal of US foreign policy is to provide profit-making opportunities to US investors and corporations. This is accomplished by pressuring, cajoling, bribing, blackmailing, threatening, subverting, destabilizing and where possible, using violence, to get foreign countries to lower or remove tariff barriers, lift restrictions on foreign investment, deny preferential treatment to domestic investors, allow repatriation of profits, and provide the US military access to the country. The right of the US military to operate on foreign soil is necessary to provide Washington with local muscle to protect US investments, ensure unimpeded access to strategic raw materials (oil, importantly), and to keep doors open to continued US economic penetration. It is also necessary to have forward operating bases from which to threaten countries whose governments aren’t open to US exports and investments
http://:gowans.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/zimbabwe-at-war/
.........continued
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
davyk
Joined: Jul 4, 2007
Posts: 497 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Blabbermouth
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Male, 28
Country: Zimbabwe
Province/State: Harare
City: Harare
|
Re: Zimbabwe has become an unusual threat to the American Foreign policy....!
July 1, 2008 - 06:58 AM
|
|
The Zanu-PF government’s policies have run afoul of US foreign policy goals in a number of ways. In 1998, “Zimbabwe – along with Angola and Namibia – was mandated by the (Southern African Development Community, a regional grouping of countries) to intervene in Congo to save a fellow SADC member country from an invasion by Uganda and Rwanda,” which were acting as proxies of the United States and Britain. Both countries wanted to bring down the young government of Laurent Kabila, fearing Kabila was turning into another Patrice Lumumba, the nationalist Congolese leader whose assassination the CIA had arranged in the 1960s. Zimbabwe’s intervention, as part of the SADC contingent, foiled the Anglo-American’s plans, and earned Mugabe the enmity of ruling circles in the West.
The Zanu-PF government’s record with the IMF also threatened US foreign policy goals. From 1991 to 1995, Mugabe’s government implemented a program of structural adjustment prescribed by the IMF as a condition of receiving balance of payment support and the restructuring of its international loans. The program required the government to cut its spending deeply, fire tens of thousands of civil servants, and slash social programs. Zimbabwe’s efforts to nurture infant industries were to be abandoned. Instead, the country’s doors were to be opened to foreign investment. Harare would radically reduce taxes and forbear from any measure designed to give domestic investors a leg up on foreign competitors. The US, Germany, Japan and South Korea had become capitalist powerhouses by adopting the protectionist and import substitution policies the IMF was forbidding. The effect of the IMF program was devastating. Manufacturing employment tumbled nine percent between 1991 and 1996, while wages dropped 26 percent. Public sector employment plunged 23 percent and public sector wages plummeted 40 percent. [19] In contrast to the frequent news stories today on Zimbabwe’s fragile economy, attributed disingenuously to “Mugabe’s disastrous land policies”, the Western press barely noticed the devastation the IMF’s disastrous economic policies brought to Zimbabwe in the 1990s. By 1996, the Mugabe government was starting to back away from the IMF prescriptions. By 1998, it was in open revolt, imposing new tariffs to protect infant industries and providing incentives to black Zimbabwean investors as part of an affirmative action program to encourage African ownership of the economy. These policies were diametrically opposed, not only to the IMF’s program of structural adjustment, but to the goals of US foreign policy.
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
Ashraf
Joined: Jan 31, 2004
Posts: 628 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Blabbermouth
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Male, 39
Country: Saudi Arabia
|
Re: Zimbabwe has become an unusual threat to the American Foreign policy....!
July 1, 2008 - 06:50 PM
|
|
So does that mean the US will bomb it ?
Everything is possible these days
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
davyk
Joined: Jul 4, 2007
Posts: 497 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Blabbermouth
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Male, 28
Country: Zimbabwe
Province/State: Harare
City: Harare
|
Re: Zimbabwe has become an unusual threat to the American Foreign policy....!
July 2, 2008 - 02:09 AM
|
|
Palestinian wrote:
So does that mean the US will bomb it ?
Everything is possible these days
-------
Regime change to begin with and if that fails sanctions and if they fail again bomb it.
so far regime change has failed and now are under sanction lets see for how long!
aluta continua
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
Ioana
Joined: Jun 30, 2008
Posts: 24 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Talkative
User is
Offline
 Virtual Volunteer
Gender & Age: Female, 25
Country: Romania
Province/State: Bucuresti
City: Bucharest
|
Re: Zimbabwe has become an unusual threat to the American Foreign policy....!
July 4, 2008 - 11:56 AM
|
|
dkaiyo wrote:
The goal of US foreign policy is to provide profit-making opportunities to US investors and corporations. This is accomplished by pressuring, cajoling, bribing, blackmailing, threatening, subverting, destabilizing and where possible, using violence, to get foreign countries to lower or remove tariff barriers, lift restrictions on foreign investment, deny preferential treatment to domestic investors, allow repatriation of profits, and provide the US military access to the country. The right of the US military to operate on foreign soil is necessary to provide Washington with local muscle to protect US investments, ensure unimpeded access to strategic raw materials (oil, importantly), and to keep doors open to continued US economic penetration. It is also necessary to have forward operating bases from which to threaten countries whose governments aren’t open to US exports and investments
Dkaiyo, are you sure that lowering or removing tariff barriers, lifting restrictions on foreign investment and denying preferential treatment to domestic investors are such bad measures?
- lowering or removing tariff barriers means access to cheaper goods for the Zimbabweans
- if there are no financial resources in the country, then why not let foreigners invest in it? - this will create jobs for the people
- foreign investors would bring new technology, know-how and maybe more money into your country's industries. Preferential treatment to domestic investors might be good for those domestic investors, but the rest of the people will have to suffer the negative consequences of that (I don't think there will be any advantages for them).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
davyk
Joined: Jul 4, 2007
Posts: 497 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Blabbermouth
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Male, 28
Country: Zimbabwe
Province/State: Harare
City: Harare
|
Re: Zimbabwe has become an unusual threat to the American Foreign policy....!
July 11, 2008 - 05:24 AM
|
|
ioanap wrote: Dkaiyo, are you sure that lowering or removing tariff barriers, lifting restrictions on foreign investment and denying preferential treatment to domestic investors are such bad measures?
- lowering or removing tariff barriers means access to cheaper goods for the Zimbabweans
- if there are no financial resources in the country, then why not let foreigners invest in it? - this will create jobs for the people
- foreign investors would bring new technology, know-how and maybe more money into your country's industries. Preferential treatment to domestic investors might be good for those domestic investors, but the rest of the people will have to suffer the negative consequences of that (I don't think there will be any advantages for them).
-
I wish you could taken time to study the effects of such policies on the economies in the book "Confessions of an economic hitman"
You also need to understand the effects of relying on the so called multinationals ask Nigerians in the Delta they will tell you--they are no good.They can meddle in your politics and manipulate how the people will vote and how the politics of the day will be played its evident here in Zimbabwe.
Closer home here ESAP which according to some a thesis of a Harvard student had such a negative impact on our economy which i strongly believe was the beginning of some of the economic problems we have here.
Even if the policies were good this does not take away the fact that US see Zimbabwe as a threat to her foreign policy.
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
davyk
Joined: Jul 4, 2007
Posts: 497 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Blabbermouth
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Male, 28
Country: Zimbabwe
Province/State: Harare
City: Harare
|
Re: Zimbabwe has become an unusual threat to the American Foreign policy....!
July 11, 2008 - 08:10 AM
|
|
i went to liberty to look for some answer to the question on if some of the policies being pushed by the West especially the US as i was asked. And this is what i got:
"Criticisms
There are multiple criticisms that focus on different elements of SAPs.
National Sovereignty
Critics claim that SAPs threaten the sovereignty of national economies because an outside organization is dictating a nation's economic policy. Critics argue that the creation of good policy is in a sovereign nation's own best interest. Thus, SAPs are unnecessary. While public debt in developing and developed countries is a nearly universal fact, low-income countries face a much more vulnerable position to maintain an equilibrated balance of payments, with some of the world's 47 poorest nations already $422 billion in debt in 2003.
Due to this near universality of debt, a popular criticism is that the structural adjustment's terms have become a template for the governance of much of humanity. Hence, some argue that the democratic policy process of countless countries has been undermined by decisions formulated miles away by western economic bureaucrats and that the implementation of such policy has solely benefited the largest donor countries (the U.S., UK, Canada, and Japan).
For example, the opening of countries to outside investment allows U.S. corporations to build factories in impoverished areas. The corporations are able to exploit the surplus of inexpensive labor, and usual lack of environmental regulations to create goods at a lower price. As a result, corporate profits rise and trade flows increase for that particular country. While this increases the GDP the majority of the profit actually benefits the corporation and the country in which the corporation is based.
Conversely, many argue that the people employed by the corporations are desperately in need of any work at all. That the alternative forms of employment, or life styles available to them are much worse."
I encourage you to follow the link
:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_adjustment+Economic+Structural+Adjustment+Program for more information and arguments for the policies and those against!
hope this helps
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
Ioana
Joined: Jun 30, 2008
Posts: 24 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Talkative
User is
Offline
Virtual Volunteer
Gender & Age: Female, 25
Country: Romania
Province/State: Bucuresti
City: Bucharest
|
Re: Zimbabwe has become an unusual threat to the American Foreign policy....!
July 11, 2008 - 08:45 AM
|
|
I admit I haven't read the "Confessions of an economic hitman", nor do i intend to, because it seems to me that it's the kind of book which makes everything seem like a conspiracy.
In Romania, it was not "multinationals" that meddled in our politics, but people who did that. Because Romania is a corrupt country.
But even so, I think we have gained a lot more than we have lost, and that's what it's important.
And national sovereignty - well, that's a concept that is slowly disappearing, little by little. Sure, every country needs to have some kind of national sovereignty, but I believe you are referring to the influence of the national government that is lost in the process, in favour of the multinationals. I personally believe that it's not a bad thing. Why is a national government's influence any better than that of a multinational?
For example, the opening of countries to outside investment allows U.S. corporations to build factories in impoverished areas. The corporations are able to exploit the surplus of inexpensive labor, and usual lack of environmental regulations to create goods at a lower price. As a result, corporate profits rise and trade flows increase for that particular country. While this increases the GDP the majority of the profit actually benefits the corporation and the country in which the corporation is based.
Conversely, many argue that the people employed by the corporations are desperately in need of any work at all. That the alternative forms of employment, or life styles available to them are much worse
It's true, working for a multinational has quite a lot of downsides, but I think it's far better than being unemployed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
davyk
Joined: Jul 4, 2007
Posts: 497 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Blabbermouth
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Male, 28
Country: Zimbabwe
Province/State: Harare
City: Harare
|
Re: Zimbabwe has become an unusual threat to the American Foreign policy....!
July 14, 2008 - 03:27 AM
|
|
ionap i think you should read it and dont dismiss the book as a "conspiracy theory" i have seen some of the things mentioned to be true.
In developing countries like ours multinationals are not helping at all. They export raw material without adding value usually to their source countries and keep the profits there and not benifitting the local community see what is happenning in the Delta region of Nigeria.Locals are underemployed and they bring in "experts" from their countries and local offered less benifits in their contracts compared to the so called experts.
Multinationals here have been used in the political games to push for the agenda of the source countries.They manipulate,shutdowns,relocations, labour cuts etc all in the name of "regime change"
So for me i have seen the multinational companies bring more damage than good to a receipient country.
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
okwan gideon
Joined: Feb 8, 2008
Posts: 8 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Soft-spoken
User is
Offline
Age: 23
Country: Ghana
|
Re: Zimbabwe has become an unusual threat to the American Foreign policy....!
July 17, 2008 - 09:43 AM
|
|
MY FRIEND,US, BRITAIN OR WHATEVER CAN DEFINITELY NOT BE THE SOLUTION TO THIS TRAUMA. WE ARE DOWN HERE CASTIGATING THE SO CALLED IMPERIALIST.WE AFRICANS OR THE PEOPLE OF ZIMBABWE AS A MATTER OF FACT CAN DO WITHOUT THEM AND IF YOU CHALLENGE THAT, I CAN BET MY LAST PENNY ON THAT.
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
davyk
Joined: Jul 4, 2007
Posts: 497 (view all)
Poster Rank:
Blabbermouth
User is
Offline
Gender & Age: Male, 28
Country: Zimbabwe
Province/State: Harare
City: Harare
|
Re: Zimbabwe has become an unusual threat to the American Foreign policy....!
July 21, 2008 - 02:21 AM
|
|
okwangideon wrote:
MY FRIEND,US, BRITAIN OR WHATEVER CAN DEFINITELY NOT BE THE SOLUTION TO THIS TRAUMA. WE ARE DOWN HERE CASTIGATING THE SO CALLED IMPERIALIST.WE AFRICANS OR THE PEOPLE OF ZIMBABWE AS A MATTER OF FACT CAN DO WITHOUT THEM AND IF YOU CHALLENGE THAT, I CAN BET MY LAST PENNY ON THAT.*
We can do without these people BUT they cant do without us. they want our resources and cheap labour.
These people should just leave us alone and sort out our issues and enjoy our resources and all!
But they cant.......
|
|
back to top |
link to this post
|
|
|
Display posts from:
|
|
