World Without Torture: The Responsibilities of the WestPaul Craig Roberts, Contributor Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was educated at Georgia Tech, the University of Virginia, the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College. He has been the Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan administration, a member of the US Congressional staff, an associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and a columnist for Business Week, the Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He was also a Senior Research Fellow for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and was appointed to the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at Georgetown Universitys Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is currently the chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and has authored or coauthored ten books and numerous articles in scholarly journals. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions. Dr. Roberts was awarded the US Treasurys Meritorious Service Award for outstanding contributions to the formulation of US economic policy, and Frances Legion of Honor as the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy, after half a century of state interventionism. NI: You worked at the US treasury as Assistant Secretary during the Reagan administration, when the world economy changed towards neo-liberalism, and you are famous for being a co-founder of Reaganomics. How did this happen? What was your contribution to changing the model of world economy? This was how the policy was supposed to work. For example, in the early 1960s US economists understood the reduction in marginal income tax rates championed by President John F. Kennedy as a stimulus to consumer demand. Prior to Reagan, economists did not understand that fiscal policy could increase or decrease aggregate supply. The demand management policy broke down during the Carter presidency. Each The only economists who had an answer to the problem of stagflation were the few supply-side economists of which I was one. Supply-side economics was an innovation in economic theory and in economic policy. Supply-side economists said that fiscal policy directly impacts aggregate supply. For example, a reduction in marginal tax rates (the rate of tax on additional income) changes important relative prices. It makes leisure more expensive in terms of foregone current income, and it makes current consumption more expensive in terms of foregone future income. Therefore, a reduction in marginal tax rates does not merely increase consumer demand. The lower tax rates result in an increase in labor and investment inputs, and aggregate supply increases. The demand management policy had stimulated demand, but the high marginal tax rates discouraged or made weaker the response of supply to demand. Therefore, prices rose. Supply-side economists said that the solution to stagflation was to change the policy mix: a tighter monetary policy and a looser fiscal policy. In other words, reduce the monetary stimulus and increase the supply incentives. The policy worked, and the worsening Phillips curve trade-offs between employment and inflation disappeared. President Reagan had two main goals: to end stagflation and to end the Cold War. He campaigned on the supply-side policy. In order to get the policy implemented, he appointed me Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. Later he associated me with his second goal by appointing me to a secret committee. Reagan thought that the Soviet economy was too decrepit to withstand the stress of a high-tech arms race. He believed that by threatening the Soviets with an arms race, he could bring them to negotiate the end of the Cold War. The CIA told Reagan that the Soviets would win the arms race, because it was a centrally planned economy that controlled investment and could allocate as many resources as necessary to the military. Reagan did not believe the CIA and appointed a committee to make the determination. The committee concluded that the Soviet economy would be unable to compete in an arms race. NI: The United States image was still reeling from the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975, when President Jimmy Carter came in to power. America had learnt an expensive lesson from the loss of more than 57,000 American servicemen in the jungles of Southeast Asia. However, during Carter administration there were also tremendous conflicts from Afghanistan to Iran, Grenada to Nicaragua. It was a hot time in the Cold War. Then in 1980 Ronald Reagan won the election, and had won the Cold War by the time he left office. How was the Reagan administration different from other presidencies? NI: Your book entitled, Alienation and the Soviet Economy, has extensively examined the economic policy of the USSR and their weaknesses in planning. Could you please share with us how their weakness benefited the US to develop a neo-liberal economy and an identity as the leader of the West? The system by which First World corporations offshore the production of goods and services that they market in their home countries is called globalism. Globalism is turning the US into a third world country. For the past two decades, the only jobs the US economy has been able to create are in lowly paid domestic services, such as waitresses, bartenders, and hospital orderlies. There has been no increase in real income for the bulk of the population. The gains in income and wealth are concentrated at the very top, and the distribution of income is now the worst in the developed world and worse than many Third World countries. The economy of the Reagan years is simply gone, disappeared. NI: In more recent years, especially after 9/11, you became a critical analyst of US foreign policy. When did things start going wrong in the US and how did it happen? NI: Lets start talking about our main subject torture. I recall from our very first communication that you said you didnt have much of an idea about torture except in the context of the US and Israel. What analysis can you share, regarding torture involving the United States? One dissident wrote that, expecting to be arrested, he memorized the names on gravestones. In my opinion, the Bush regime, a neoconservative regime, used the hyped fear about the threat of Muslim terrorism to get the acquiescence of the American public, Congress and the federal courts to torture, arguing that torture was necessary in order to protect Americans from events such as 9/11. The neoconservatives reasoned that if the executive branch could violate, with impunity, both constitutional and legal prohibitions against torture, the precedent could be expanded to habeas corpus, due process, and to free speech, free assembly, (protests) and to criticism of the governments policies, which is being redefined as aiding and abetting terrorism. Once law and the Constitution could be side-lined, the regime could escape war criminal accountability for its wars of naked aggression. President Obama won the presidential election, because voters expected him to stop the wars, stop the torture, and to hold the Bush regime criminals accountable. However, Obama found the new powers convenient and held on to them and expanded them. He refused to hold the Bush regime criminals accountable. He had the illegal and unconstitutional powers asserted by the Bush regime codified in US law. And Obama asserted new powersthe right to murder American citizens of whom he was suspicious, without due process of law. What the Bush and Obama regimes have done is to turn the United States into a Gestapo-like police state. Prior to Bush/Obama it was illegal for the government to spy on Americans without cause presented to a court, which, if convinced, would provide a warrant. Now every aspect of Americans lives are routinely watched, their movements, their emails, their internet usage, and even their purchases. Not only are air travelers subjected to intimate searches, but train and bus travelers too, and car and truck traffic on interstate highways is stopped and searched. There have been no terrorist attacks on trains, buses, or highway travel. Yet, the freedom of mobility in the US has been compromised even more than it was in the Soviet Union with the system of internal passports. NI: What is your suggested solution to this critique? In other words how can the responsible governments correct things and lead their people towards freedom? NI: Just hours after the release of the State Departments annual human rights report, you wrote an opinion saying that the US government was the second worst human rights abuser on the planet and the sole enabler of the worst abuser Israel. If this is true, US pressure for human rights reforms in other countries seems hypocritical. Do you want the US government to stop talking to these other countries? If the US doesnt have the right to criticize human rights violence in other countries, who does? It is Washington that is conducting war for eleven years in Afghanistan on false pretenses, killing an unknown, but large, number of Afghans. It is Washington that is violating the sovereignty of Pakistan and Yemen, murdering people in these countries daily on false pretenses. It was Washington that organized the overthrow of the Libyan government, leaving the country in total chaos, with untold deaths. It is Washington that is responsible for endless violence in Somalia. It is Washington that has sent US troops to four African countries as part of the new imperialist venture known as the US Africa Command. How can a government that commits massive violations of human rights in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa, and at home lecture, or speak to, any other country about human rights? The world accepts this unbelievable hypocrisy because of the success of US propaganda during the Cold War. The propaganda placed the white hat firmly on the head of the US government. NI: You opposed the war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and other ongoing conflicts in East Asia as well. We saw how torture occurred in those wars. Perhaps the most high profile and visible case of torture in recent years was the public execution of Muammar Gaddafi. Torture has become a norm, regardless of the victims guilt or innocence. There are numerous international conventions against torture but torture still exists in many places. What are your feelings about this? Why are events moving in that direction? In my opinion, neoconservative triumphalism has destroyed American morality and left hubris in its place. Americans are overwhelmed by how great and good and moral and indispensable they are. American hubris raises Americans above everyone else in the world. Americans can torture, murder, invade, and still lecture the rest of the world about human rights. NI: In one of your pieces published last April, you pointed out, I agree that there is a lot of evil in every country and civilization. In the struggle between good and evil, religion has at times been on the side of evil. However, the notion of moral progress cannot so easily be thrown out. As you say, in many countries liberty was lost, though the notion of moral progress cannot be easily thrown out. Can you explain more about this interesting conclusion? The point is that we cannot give up hope that the world can be returned to a moral existence. What is discouraging is that it is no longer the West, and certainly not the US government, that is the upholder of the rights of mankind. NI: How can we change for the better? Where should it start if we are to achieve a torture-free society? Western governments have become the antithesis of morality. linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 