My Reading Notes

Wither the Soviets?

Continuing on w/ reading notes from Dreyfuss' Hostage to Khomeini:

It would be a mistake to take at face value Brzezinski's comments that the primary target of the Carter administration's alliance with militant Islam is the Soviet Union. The primary target is the economies of America's "allies" in Western Europe.. and the primary weapon is oil.

In 1978, the governments of France and West Germany led the EC - with the exception of Britain - in the formation of the European Monetary System (EMS), conceived as a "seed crystal for the replacement of the IMF" .. the EMS challenged the "controlled disintegration" of the Carter administration. It called for:

• Strengthening the U.S. dollar
• Return to the gold standard
• Expansion of nuclear energy production
• Export of high tech to the developing world

The success of this program hinged on an alliance w/ OPEC nations. As early as 1977, France and West Germany had begun exploring the possibility of consecrating a deal w/ OPEC in which Western Europe would export high tech to OPEC countries in exchange for long-term oil supply contracts at a stable price. In return, OPEC countries woudl deposit their enormous financial surpluses in Western European banks and - eventually - into the EMS's own institutions, which would refund them to the Third World. With those credits, the Third World would begin to gain access to European high technology exports.

When London discovered that it could not dissuade Giscard d'Estaing and Helmut Schmidt from the EMS project in 1978, the green light was given to the Muslim Brotherhood to speed the destabilization of Iran. Western Europe and Japan are almost totally dependent upon Persian Gulf oil, and during 1978 the supply came from: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the UAE.

In October 1979 The invasion would be calculated not to secure an oil supply for the United States, but rather to withhold it from the Europeans and Japanese. Since the taking of hostages, this threat has been held over the head of the EMS like a sword of Damocles.

Brzezinski's "Islamic card" has functioned as the most brutal end of the policy the Carter administration brought into the White House. One of the first actions Carter took when he assued office in Jan 1977 was to dispatch Walter Mondale to France and West Germany to tell the leaders of those countries that the US would henceforth oppose the sale of nuclear technology to the Third World. West Germany's deal with Brazil, and France's proposed deal with Pakistan, fell under heavy criticism. In Iran, the Shah had pledged to bring Iran into the ranks of the world's top ten industrialized nations by the year 2000, and a comprehensive nuclear program - backed by France and West Germany - was already underway.

Today the Shah's nuclear cooling towers are used as silos for grain, and "Iranization" has become a blackmail threat against every Third World nations seeking to industrialize.

posted by Paul Sholtz @ 12:33 AM