A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and Global Corruption
by Steven Hiatt and Introduction by John Perkins
Summary
In plain language, A Game as Old as Empire shows how First World countries have used “economic hit men,” institutions like the World Bank and IMF, coercion and even outright strong-arm tactics to steal from the developing countries—often in collusion with the elites of those countries who are happy to hide their ill-gotten gain in offshore accounts.
This is an important book that should be read by anyone who wants to know how the world is run to the advantage of the wealthy few and the malicious disadvantage of the many poor. In a concluding section, the authors also offer hope and practical advice.
Excerpt
A never-ending accumulation of property must be based on a neverending accumulation of power. —Hannah Arendt
In June 2003, after declaring “Mission accomplished!” in the wake of Operation Iraqi Freedom, George W. Bush told cheering West Point cadets that
America has “no territorial ambitions. We don’t seek an empire.” Meanwhile, neoconservative pundits like Niall Ferguson and Charles Krauthammer were
encouraging him to do precisely that: to “make the transition from informal to formal empire,” by acknowledging America’s actual role in the world and
accepting the reality that “political globalization is a fancy word for imperialism.” Had the post-postwar world—the new order emerging since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989—come full circle to a new Age of Empire?
The victory of the Allies in 1945, confirming the right of peoples to self-determination in their Atlantic Charter declaration, seemed to signal the end for the world’s colonial empires. Colonial peoples in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East had seen the armies of Britain, France, and the Netherlands defeated in 1940-41, and knew that the former imperial powers now had neither the military nor the financial resources to enforce their rule for long. Moreover, the two strongest powers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, were formally on the anti-imperialist side. The U.S. had long pursued an “open door” policy advocating formal independence for the developing countries. The Soviet Union had denounced imperialism since its birth in 1917, and the communist movement it led had wide appeal in parts of the colonial world as a result.
Nevertheless, the European colonial powers tried to hang on to their possessions as long as they could. Britain did finally “quit India” in 1947, but fought insurgents in Kenya, Cypress, and Malaya before granting those countries independence. France fought losing, divisive wars in Indochina and Algeria to retain its bit of imperial gloire. Still, the tide of history was clearly running in favor of self-determination around the world. The quandary for Western elites was how to manage this process. Would new Third World leaders attempt to strike out on their own, taking control of their countries’ resources in order to build their own national industries? Or--worse--would they ally with the Soviet bloc or would nationalist campaigns prepare the way for takeovers by communist parties?
For Western Europeans, loss of access to colonial resources and markets would be an enormous blow: their weakened economies were only slowly
recovering from World War II and they planned to force the colonies to help pay for reconstruction. For its part, the U.S. feared that colonial independence would weaken its European allies and might well lead to the expansion of Soviet influence in Europe. And U.S. business leaders were concerned about a postwar return to the depression that had marked the 1930s, so they were eager to preserve access to resources and possible new markets.
Events in Iran, Guatemala, and Egypt in the 1950s marked a new turn in Western policies in what was becoming known as the Third World. In 1951,
Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized the country’s oil industry, which had been run by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (since renamed British Petroleum)....
Copyright © 2007 by Steven Hiatt and John Perkins
Reprinted with permission of Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.
Reviews
"[E]xplains how the International Money Fund and World Bank function, providing insight into the complex world of international economics"--AudioFile This text refers to the CD version.
“Well referenced, very readable and perversely entertaining”—Common Ground Magazine
Author's Biography
STEVEN HIATT has worked as an editor and writer for Apple Computer, Netscape, Progressive Asset Management, and Stanford Research Institute. He is the editor (with Mike Davis) of Fire in the Hearth: The Radical Politics of Place in America (Verso), and is president of Editcetera, a cooperative of publishing professionals. He and his wife live in San Francisco, California.