Naomi Klein (The Nation): The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Issue of May 2, 2005
Posted online Thursday April 14

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
By Naomi Klein

Last summer, in the lull of the August media doze, the Bush Administration's doctrine of preventive war took a major leap forward. On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate "post-conflict" plans for up to twenty-five countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict. According to Pascual, it will also be able to coordinate three full-scale reconstruction operations in different countries "at the same time," each lasting "five to seven years."

Fittingly, a government devoted to perpetual pre-emptive deconstruction now has a standing office of perpetual pre-emptive reconstruction.

Gone are the days of waiting for wars to break out and then drawing up ad hoc plans to pick up the pieces. In close cooperation with the National Intelligence Council, Pascual's office keeps "high risk" countries on a "watch list" and assembles rapid-response teams ready to engage in prewar planning and to "mobilize and deploy quickly" after a conflict has gone down. The teams are made up of private companies, nongovernmental organizations and members of think tanks--some, Pascual told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in October, will have "pre-completed" contracts to rebuild countries that are not yet broken. Doing this paperwork in advance could "cut off three to six months in your response time."

The plans Pascual's teams have been drawing up in his little-known office in the State Department are about changing "the very social fabric of a nation," he told CSIS. The office's mandate is not to rebuild any old states, you see, but to create "democratic and market-oriented" ones. So, for instance (and he was just pulling this example out of his hat, no doubt), his fast-acting reconstructors might help sell off "state-owned enterprises that created a nonviable economy." Sometimes rebuilding, he explained, means "tearing apart the old."

Few ideologues can resist the allure of a blank slate--that was colonialism's seductive promise: "discovering" wide-open new lands where utopia seemed possible. But colonialism is dead, or so we are told; there are no new places to discover, no terra nullius (there never was), no more blank pages on which, as Mao once said, "the newest and most beautiful words can be written." There is, however, plenty of destruction--countries smashed to rubble, whether by so-called Acts of God or by Acts of Bush (on orders from God).

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[Frederik]

1. Thanks for that

ominous is the word...

[rodeodance]

2. whow whow whow--

[housewolf]

3. This is an important piece

An important piece of the puzzle of "what the heck is going on in the world and why isn't anything working right???"

Thanks for posting.

[oscar111]

4. their ideology blinds them to reality, so they will fail

they ... neocons... convince themselves that the world wants a layer of extreme poverty at the bottom, like here.

so the neocons will misjudge those "stabilizing" cultures, and the neocons will fail, just like in iraq now.

Cross-cultural misunderstanding.

As common and eternally re-appearing as

Institutional flaws.. like "if the idea did not come from our owner/manager, then we will never consider it". Recipe for doom. LOL.