The Failed States Of America?

Looking at that list and the direction the United States has been headed since George W. Bush took office, it appears that the US is on its way to becoming a failed state.

Bush did not win the majority of votes in his first election, after all, and there is a lot of evidence that his brother acted to commit what amounts to election fraud. A Supreme Court, appointed by Bush’s father, appointed him president. A mini-riot that stopped the recount of the Florida ballots has since been revealed to have been orchestrated by the Republican Party and had many prominent Republicans taking part in it.

This election showed that once again the US is incapable of holding a fair and democratic election. Both sides have gathered together an army of lawyers. There are charges of election fraud on both sides. There have been very definite cases of discouraging people from voting based on race and age. The existing power structure has brought in voting machines that are easily tampered with and leave no paper trail, making fraud difficult to detect.

It is very clear that the United States has become incapable of holding a fair election. As a result observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) sent observers from its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights to monitor the US presidential elections for the first time ever.

While the OSCE monitors many elections in Europe and around the world, the request that they monitor this presidential election and their monitoring of the US mid-term elections in 2002 is based on possible civil rights violations that took place in Florida and elsewhere in the 2000 election. The Bush White House and the Republican Party initially opposed the presence of election observers, relenting only after strenuous debate. The fact that the Bush administration finally relented and allowed OSCE observers to monitor the election is not a sudden realisation that they should promote democracy or promote a fair and transparent election process, but a treaty-level agreement with OSCE members requiring them to do so.

The human rights group Global Exchange gathered a team of observers for this election. Professional election observers from many of the places that the US usually sends observers to monitored this election. Many Americans, mostly from the Republican side of things, were none too happy about this influx of foreigners watching their electoral mess, yet the dirty tricks continue.

Now that George Bush has been re-elected the United States will continue its downward spiral. The US dollar is failing due to excessive debt, yet one of the first actions of the Bush White house was to seek an increase on the debt ceiling. That debt is threatening the ability of the United States to fulfill future domestic and security obligations. The devastating effect of the debt leaves the US with little room to manoeuver, but President Bush’s policies seem to be doing little to address international concerns.

Debt is not the only threat that the dollar faces though. The Euro is gaining power as a currency because of its higher value and the instability of the US dollar. Some OPEC nations have been pushing their fellow oil producing nations to step away from the US dollar and use the Euro instead. Countries such as Venezuela have already moved away from the dollar and there has been more than a little speculation that part of reason for the illegal invasion of Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s decision to sell oil for Euros instead of US dollars. There are also those who believe that OPEC has actually been pricing oil in Euros for quite some time.

With a burgeoning debt, an out of control trade deficit, and a rapidly devaluing dollar; the United States no longer controls it’s own economy. It does well at the whim of other nations. The US has been acting badly on the world stage though, and those other nations are losing faith in it. Their whims will not favour the United States for much longer.

It takes more than poor economic decisions and a couple of elections that bring democratic institutions into question to define a failed state though. Rule of law is important. The US has been involved in its war on drugs for longer than most of us have been around. The result is one of the highest incarceration rates of its own citizens that the world has ever seen.

The incarceration rate is rising even though crime rates are down. According to a recent New York Times article, The number of inmates in state and federal prisons rose 2.1 percent last year, even as violent crime and property crime fell, according to a study by the Justice Department released yesterday. There is a strong racial component to the incarceration statistics and the article goes on to note, The report estimated that 44 percent of state and federal prisoners in 2003 were black, compared with 35 percent who were white, 19 percent who were Hispanic and 2 percent who were of other races. The numbers have changed little in the last decade.

Statistically, the number of women in prison is growing fast, rising 3.6 percent in 2003. But at a total of 101,179, they are just 6.9 percent of the prison population.

Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, said one of the most striking findings in the report was that almost 10 percent of all American black men ages 25 to 29 were in prison.

In many states many with a record for a felony are not allowed to vote, even if they have been released from prison. That leads to the disenfranchisement of a large portion of the population and further reduces the voice of African-American voters.

Another area where minorities are over-represented is in the military. That has largely to do with the disparity between rich and poor in the United States. A disappearing middle class and an ever widening wage gap in a country that has long used its military as a form of social assistance is a sure sign that increasing militarisation has as much to do with economics as anything else.

The final sign of a failed state is a state without the resources to sustain itself. A willingness to sustain itself through military action show how desperate the United States, especially under the leadership of George Bush, has become. The United States cannot meet its own energy needs and has gone to war to ensure those needs are met. If you doubt the illegal invasion of Iraq was about oil, look up what Project for a New American Century has been calling for since the early 1990's and consider that every administration since the energy crisis of the 1970's has stated that access to foreign energy is a security concern. Iraq is about oil.

So Canada is living next to the largest, most powerful state ever to be in serious danger of failing. That puts us in a precarious position. Our economy is closely tied to the US economy. The US covets both our energy resources, which they have unhealthy control over, and our reserves of fresh water, which they have made several overtures about. Living next to failing giant that is thrashing about and grasping at whatever straws it thinks might save it is not a comfortable position.

The US does not have to fail though. If it addresses its very real problems by backing away from its destructive policies, the world will be more than happy to help it through this rough spot. The first step would be an attempt by the US to rejoin the world community. If they begin to act within the scope of international law and agree to join international initiatives such as Kyoto, the landmines treaty, and nuclear anti-proliferation initiatives; the world community should welcome the USA back into the fold. If they refuse to do that, they should be shunned as international pariah and allowed to hit bottom.

The United States is like a junkie at the crossroads right now. We can offer help, but if that help is refused...if George Bush and his cabinet decide they are happier self-destructing than straightening out...then we really have no choice but to let them fall on their faces. You don’t let a drug-addicted friend pawn your family heirlooms and we shouldn’t allow the US to pawn our future.