Did Argentina get trapped in debt with IMF because a meteor hit Buenos Aires?
Did a tsunami hit Athens?
These countries burned through their reserves with no responsibility at all, reserves which were hard earned money from the population, and people demonize the IMF alone?
It has become popular on the left to blame the IMF for a country’s problems, when the IMF is the last resort for a country that has shot itself in the foot. Some people can’t handle reality when it conflicts with their fantasy.
As someone on 'the left', the criticism are both of the IMF and the local governments. Pretending however that the IMF does not play a role in many 'misfortunes' is laughable. It is also ignorant to pretend that because Africa has been more or less 'independent' for over 40 years, that the history of colonialism should be discounted as having no effect on the present anymore.
This does not mean that the countries themselves should bear no responsibility and few are making that claim.
Since 'the left' isn't a monolithic entity, it's hard to describe a singular solution that we all agree on, or even name everything off the top of my head, but in my view, a good start would be to stop overthrowing people that do not open markets sufficiently to our interests, try to limit trade in USD/EUR etc. or otherwise do not align with 'our' interests.
More favorable terms would also certainly help, so would actually listening to the local populace, instead of handing money to a corrupt central government. Corruption itself mostly stems from lack of sufficient resources and progression for everybody, which is not helped by pouring more money into the very machine powering it.
NGOs can also be incredibly corrupt and wasteful, see Haiti.
Instead of sending in money, fund concrete projects to build infrastructure and provide good paying jobs by having locals build it. Work with local communities to set up small businesses and help them set up networks to export their goods etc.
There's plenty of failures to study from and some successes that need to be expanded. The big problems with such projects tends to be that even when the "grand goal" is good, if you will, locals are not consulted, farmers are displaced etc. which only breeds hatred towards the people telling themselves they're helping.
Stop being arrogant and thinking that we "know better" than the people who actually live in the area. Might be a good starting point.
What is the right's solution? Repeat what was done till now and expect a different result, do not participate at all...?
> Stop being arrogant and thinking that we "know better" than the people who actually live in the area.
I believe this is the problem - the locals that have ran their country into the ground have proven that they do not how to manage their own country. This is why the market, which expects to be paid back, will no longer fund their mismanagement.
You have an extremely warped view of foreign countries that are forced to take loans from the IMF - these countries have economies that are collapsing.
> the locals that have ran their country into the ground have proven that they do not how to manage their own country
The locals did not yet have much of a chance to actually run their own country, without facing coups, sanctions etc. from former colonial masters the moment they actually try to act sovereign. Having some dictator approved by France/U.S. running things is not my definition of locals running things.
> You have an extremely warped view of foreign countries
Take this advice yourself. The U.S. supports 75% of the world's dictatorships. If you believe that being exploited for centuries and then being forced down various neoliberal/'free market' policies down their throats by their former colonial masters after supposedly gaining independence, while the west props up some absolutely corrupt fu*k just so they can continue exploiting, then sending clothes in to feel better, without actually developing the local economy, if you think these things are not going on you're seriously delusional.
Read up on the history of Haiti. Then come back and we may have a real discussion.
Yes, and/or confirmation bias. There have been articles on the Chinese Road and Belt Initiative and their long-term geopolitical goals for a few years now.
That initiative has only became more newsworthy and pressing as the world's largest economy has turned inward.
The OP used the word frequency, I also noticed that lately we get at least 2 anti China articles on top page, maybe nothing changed on publishing side but the HN voting changed making this anti China articles stick to the top or on the first page a lot.
I don't care enough about it to investigate the numbers of articles on HN with China in title so is all something I noticed and I am not from US (so I have no horse in the trade war)
The current US administration clearly wants to pick a fight with China.
Massive resources are spent manipulating media including social media. And the biggest spenders are the established political parties and governments of the west.
Maybe what you are seeing is just randomness and confirmation bias but as the saying goes just because you are paranoid it does not mean that you are not being followed.
Considering how NATO, The Gulf Countries, China and Russia are behaving, seems that in 200 years we will be still learning how to build the wheel again. If were are lucky.
The oil of these nations is extremely valuable for the US not to consume them but to acquire exploration rights with ridiculous terms, generating a huge amount of revenue, propping the US economy up keeping up the American dream.
The US has Saudi Arabia and the gulf countries on it's side, Libya in shambles, Venezuela and Iran isolated. That gives the US a lot of power on the energy market.
Hamas chose Saudi Arabia's and Qatar's side on the Syrian conflict and that lead to Assad breaking relations with them.
Syria took it as a betrayal so I doubt they would do anything to help Hamas.
Israel is not bombing Syria to defend itself. Syria never had and nor will have the capability to do anything to Israel.
The reason Israel have been bombing Syria is the same reason Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, USA, UK, France, Australia and the rest of the coalition are doing it too: regime change.
They want to replace Assad with a puppet, like Hariri in Lebanon, so they can all push their own agendas in the region.
And on the other side Russia, Iran and Hezbollah jumped in Assad's rescue to counter that move.
They are ALL pushing their own interests at the expense of Syrian lives so please drop this outrageous "defending itself" narrative and admit all actors of both sides are war criminals with blood on their hands.
> Israel is not bombing Syria to defend itself. Syria never had and nor will have the capability to do anything to Israel.
You're forgetting about the Six-Day War [1] and the Yom Kippur War [2]. Yes, there are controversies around those too, and Israel came out on top in the end - but let's not pretend that Israel the modern nation-state hasn't been on guard against being obliterated by its neighbors since Day 1.
Nobody denied those conflicts and the need of Israel to defend itself.
But sometime seems that only Israel has the right to defend itself, even when its not on the defense but actively bombing countries with far inferior armies / allies and they have to just accept being bombed because of events 50 years ago.
Can Iraq or Syria use the recent invasions as excuse to do whatever they want for the next 50 years too?
The concept of preemptive war has always been an excuse to actually start wars.
US is not annexing Iraq because then US will have to grant US citizenship to Iraqis and they will be free to move to mainland US. Nobody wants that, so instead US bombs the shit out of Iraq, honors its "independence" by erecting a pro-American puppet government, and acts surprised when shit falls apart.
So yeah, not all wars are the same, but people suffer all the same.
A puppet government? Hardly. We simply replaced Sunni for Shiite and slightly shifted things in a millennial old civil war. It was naive optimism of the Potomac chess players that we could reshape a country by invading it.[1] Others have mentioned the US supporting heinous countries like Saudi Arabia. This is sadly true and should stop, despite what the referenced article says about “staying engaged”. Ceasing support of tyrants and ending overtly militaristic policies is not disengaging, but reevaluating failed policies.
But the US also acts through a democracy, while the countries mentioned above do not. I can criticize the stupid policies of the US in a public forum. The citizens of the countries listed above can not. Democracy is not the equivalent of an oligarchy or tyranny. The people of a country are different from the government that represents them. Unelected governments are illegitimate and a danger to the free world despite what their minions of propaganda post.
> A puppet government? Hardly. We simply replaced Sunni for Shiite and slightly shifted things in a millennial old civil war.
When I read these type of comments I get truly scared on how the lives of non-western people don't really mean anything to lots of people.
There wasn't as slight shift in a conflict but an all out invasion causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in a few years. Millions if you consider the last 20 years.
> But the US also acts through a democracy, while the countries mentioned above do not.
Crimes committed by a democracy, a theocracy or a dictatorship are crimes all the same. That is how the rest of the world sees it and it's time for the west to start seeing it too.
> > But the US also acts through a democracy, while the countries mentioned above do not.
I guess the innocent men, women and children feel better having died at the hands of a democracy.
But, your comment did bring a smile to my face, especially as what is happening right now [0]
Democracy? Iraq War pt II. Led by Bush, declared illegal by many, unwanted by more. Led by Bush, democracy. How did he get installed again? Ahh yes, the Florida "recount". Where the governor was his brother and the partisan SCOTUS decided along partisan lines rather than recount.
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[0] POTUS stating the current recount in Florida should be stopped, even though is mandated by state law. Democracy?
The US occupied Iraq for a decade and is still in Afghanistan. While we did not overtly annex, it is clear that the US attempted to control these countries. You would do better to make your point without the moralizing.
The fact is that the US is a global aggressor just as much as the other countries on the list.
> they were saving Muslims from genocide in the Balkans
If you're referring to the NATO bombing of Serbia, then you are incorrect -- there was no genocide in Kosovo.
The justification for the Western intervention (100,000's of people murdered by Serbia) was a lie [1] [2], and Milosevic (the "Butcher of the Balkans") was exonerated of the charges of war crimes, twice [3] [4].
[3] is an opinion piece, [4] says that he was exonorated. However, the wikipedia page says: "After Milošević's death, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded separately in the Bosnian Genocide Case that there was no evidence linking him to genocide committed by Bosnian Serb forces during the Bosnian War. However, the Court did find that Milošević and others in Serbia had committed a breach of the Genocide Convention by failing to prevent the genocide from occurring and for not cooperating with the ICTY in punishing the perpetrators of the genocide, in particular General Ratko Mladić, and for violating its obligation to comply with the provisional measures ordered by the Court."
Just because he was personally exonerated does not imply no genocide happened.
As long as Saudi Arabia is one of Americas "greatest" allies there is no leg to stand on arguing any aspect of US foreign policy involves a moral war against totalitarianism.
The hypocrisy is clear, but hypocrisy is not sufficient to prove that one does not care at all.
What is pretty clear is that the USA takes a strategic and occasionally very partisan view when making their choices of alliances as well as their use of power and force. I'm not sure they are very unique in this respect though.
Even if they genuinely cared about it, 90 percents of regimes worldwide are dictatorships or authoritarian regimes. So you can not work with anyone if you have very strong principles.
You mean war against radical religious terrorists and dictators that are not allies like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and etc?
Countries which support the Al-Nusra front, which was affiliated to Al-Qaeda, which masterminded 9/11 an event which 90% of the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia or other gulf countries and 0 from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Iran.
The concept of righteous crusades has been around forever and it's stunning that it still works.
Did Argentina get trapped in debt with IMF because a meteor hit Buenos Aires?
Did a tsunami hit Athens?
These countries burned through their reserves with no responsibility at all, reserves which were hard earned money from the population, and people demonize the IMF alone?