The World Bank And The Spread Of The American Empire

By Author: Dene McGriff
Total Articles: 7
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The World Bank and the Spread of the American Empire
By Dene McGriff
I must confess to being a cog as in the cog in a machine. Did I know I was? Nope, but I have gradually come to see that I was a cog in the building of the American Global Empire. Please don't get mad at me for my confessions, for I certainly didn't realize it at the time. In fact, most of us are oblivious to what is really going on around us. I certainly was, but the more I look into my past, the more I realize my role - as apparently innocent as it appeared to be. I spent most of my life in international work but little did I know what I was really involved in. I was a little cog in a great big machine that was creating the greatest global empire in the history of the world. We didn't carry guns, just a briefcase and a laptop! We were the new empire builders! Please let me explain.
Background
America has been building a vast global empire for the past century. By the end of WWII, it was the undisputed leader with only Russia and its satellites standing in the way of global hegemony! A couple of quick little wars in Korea and Vietnam showed ...
... the futility of winning by conventional means. But a much more serious war was on whose goal was to turn the entire world into client states of America - tied to us by our apparent generosity and good will. How did this process work?
The end of World War II left Europe and Japan in shambles (the developed world). How were they to be rebuilt? What was the strategy? Very simple, we opened our markets to them. We invested in their business and infrastructure. But what of the rest of the undeveloped world? How were we going to bring them into the Twentieth Century? In true American form and efficiency, we launched a multi-pronged attack.
The Peace Corp sent out young people throughout the world to identify and develop projects. These were the best and the brightest. They were bilingual, sensitive cross-culturally and became the source for great expansion of international business, international aid and development and the CIA. The Peace Corp spawned the birth of companies known as the beltway bandits - consulting companies eager to help the government spend USAID, World Bank, IMF and other monies. I worked on and off for these consulting companies over a period of 25 years. Christian relief and development agencies also got involved in the act (World Relief, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Food for the Hungry, etc.) as well. I worked with two of them as well.
These minions of do gooders (myself included) fanned out across the globe developing relationships, identifying needs, writing grants and business plans to bring economic development to the undeveloped world. I personally worked all over Central and South America, the Far East (Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines), Africa and the Middle East. All this time, I had no idea I was a part of the machine
Phase I
The back drop of all this is that the developed world - Europe, Japan, America and Canada represented about 20 percent of the world population. Latin America, Africa and the rest of Asia, India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia represented the other 80 percent. They needed infrastructure - water, power, transportation, industry, bridges, dams, technology. How were we to get that to them and where would this all lead? The seductive part is that out goal was so good. Most people were dying from diseases caused by drinking bad water. Cholera, typhoid, malaria - so many diseases could be taken care of just by improving sanitation. Agriculture could be improved, natural resources exploited, industry developed, housing improved, etc.
So the army of volunteers, consultants and corporate executives spread throughout the world looking for opportunity. But who would pay for it? These countries certainly didn't have excess money to pay for costly infrastructure! The same foundation that was laid to rebuild Europe and Japan was used - the IMF and World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Inter American Development Bank, the Asia Development Bank, etc. USAID is a part of the State Department and works closely with, if not for the CIA (as I found out the hard way). The political and economic officers and attaches of our embassies were almost always CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). Reports produced - whether on health care, agricultural development, education, population control (known as woman and child health) - all ended up in CIA reports. There was a tremendous amount of overlap between the different agencies and the companies working with them. As development occurred, USAID tended to phase out and World Bank took over and bilateral relationships were established with developing country governments.
Here is how it worked. Acquaintances were made, and friendships established especially through the Peace Corps and Christian missionaries who were there as scouts for the empire. They were followed by consultants who would be hired by USAID to identify needs, and develop specifications for a project. This would result in an RFP (Request for Proposal) which would go out in formal government digests. Consulting companies or businesses would then develop proposals in response to the RFP. There would usually be a committee consisting of USAID employees and counterparts in the host government that would go through a selection process. Eventually, it would be awarded to a US firm. I personally worked on hundreds of proposals and numerous projects.
Here is an example of how it works. In 1985, I was selected as team leader to evaluate a $27 million health infrastructure project that had been awarded to Westinghouse Health Systems. This was the mid term evaluation of a multi-year project. It was an exciting time - machine gun fire and mortars going off constantly up in the mountains above the Holiday Inn where we stayed. I spent the better part of the summer there. The Salvadoran people were gracious and hard working. The folks staying in the hotel either worked for a consulting company, the CIA, paramilitary or adoption agencies. There were even a couple of Russians. It was quite an eclectic mix.
There were four other people on my team looking at different aspects of the project. Westinghouse was providing training, buying medical supplies, ambulances, etc. Two really important things came out of the study. The first and most important is that only about $2 million was a grant. The rest, about $25 million, was a loan that had to be paid back. I found that this was quite common. Most of our aid was really in the form of loans - hundreds of millions in all that had to be paid back!
The other is that the health budget for the country didn't increase by $27 million. In fact it didn't increase at all. I asked the Minister of Health why not? They spent it on other things - mainly guns. This aspect of the report became very controversial as the report hit Congress. They tracked me down in Kingston, Jamaica to ask me about it. It turns out that the USAID health and population officer in charge of the project told Congress it was additional money to the budget. He was furious with me and later got caught doing deals under the table and ended up going to jail for a few years.
When you look at the billions of dollars spent in these different countries, you quickly see that 90 or more percent were in the form of loans - loans that had to be paid back! The best thing to happen was a natural disaster, an earthquake, typhoon or flood which led to cooperation and later projects to rebuild. This isn't to be cynical about the recent tsunami but that is how it worked.
I will come back to the details in later articles but the debt became an unbearable load to these developing countries. The infrastructure projects were sold based on optimistic estimates of GDP growth that never quite happened. A few of the elites in the government and business got wealthy, but there was marginal benefit for the people. A history of default and restructuring of loans followed, but were never paid. Just like our credit card debt, they were lucky to keep up with the interest but never quite got to the principle. They could work off some of the debt by giving concessions to American business, voting with the U.S. in the United Nations or providing other benefits to America. In some cases, the situation was so critical debts were just written off. But generally, this is not the case.
The American global empire spread by enticing the developing world into projects that were extremely high cost. I used to feel guilty knowing that I was making as much in one day as the local professionals working with me made in a month. At one time, my billing rate was over $400 an hour! We knew they would default on the loans. We would just restructure them and time them tighter into our little empire.
Christians played an unknowing role in this first phase of development. The role of Summer Institute of Linguistics or Wycliffe Bible Translators is well known and documented that they were used by the CIA and promoted American business interests. But let's just talk about my experience. (Please see Thy Will be Done by Charlotte Dennett) In 1979, I went to work for World Relief of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). I wrote the first grant funded by USAID to start our development activities (in contrast to relief). I worked for Cleo Shook who had just left the Carter administration as an Under Secretary of State. Cleo, like many missionaries, in the 1950s had gone to Afghanistan but couldn't stay as a Christian Missionary. He became the CIA eyes and ears in Afghanistan and later Iran, started the Peace Corps with Sergeant Shriver, and though a wonderful Christian, was an emissary for the empire.
Phase II
The first phase was to do basic community and infrastructure development. The next phase was the expansion of the global empire by exporting jobs to cheap labor markets. I have been in sweatshops in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Nigeria (back in the mid ‘80s) We were trying to convince the plant managers that they would get better work productivity if they provided health and family planning services to the workers. TIPPS, Enterprise and a whole host of other USAID projects were aimed at helping the private sector.
Another aspect of this was privatization. The concept was that the private sector could do a better job (with the profit motive) than the public sector. Whole sectors were being privatized - transportation, health, utilities, etc. Instead of being privatized by local business, multinationals would come in and take over resulting in much higher costs than before. But this was the democratic, capitalistic thing to do. I worked on projects like this in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Jamaica and other countries. I helped the Colombian government develop a managed competition system in the mid to late ‘90s with the idea of privatization and cost control. The result was a disaster for the bankrupt public system - the safety net for the poor.
Today we see jobs going overseas by the millions. Our development efforts have been in part successful in that there is a relatively healthy, well fed, educated work force willing to do our jobs for one tenth the wage. Do our elites really care that they are displacing American workers? Not really. Do they care that eventually they may lose their domestic market? Not really. It's pretty small compared to the rest of the world (we are only 5 percent of the population).
America may have its budget and trade deficits. The average American family may be falling deeper in debt, but so what? Isn't that the overall strategy of the elites? To bankrupt countries and individuals and make them totally dependent and obedient to the elites. If you have been reading my material for some time, you know that I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but this seems pretty well organized.
The difficult part with deception is that it is sooo good. It can really fool you. We act on the information we have. Sure, a lot of well-meaning people have been involved in spreading the empire without even realizing it. What we have done has apparently been done with the best intentions, but the most terrible result. The government, the media and the powerful corporate interests are ready with their own explanation. I doubt that very few connect the dots and see the connections.
One has to ask themselves, why does the world so hate us? People are not as dumb as we may think. I have run into taxi drivers in Buenos Aires who are clearer on the role of America in the world than the average American. Get your passport updated and travel somewhere. Talk to the people and you will see. It got so embarrassing being an American; I would either speak Spanish or say I was Canadian.
Some Call it Conspiracy
There is a worldwide network of elites. Is there a conspiracy or is it all just coincidental? No country in the world has developed a truly global economic and military empire as we have. Is this that great last days nation that will dominate the earth? One should not be so quick to predict her demise. It took more than a hundred years to get here and we will not be that easily deposed. The American elites are truly global. Just as they have provided credit to the nations to enslave them, they have supplied ample credit to the American households to consume beyond their means - resulting in our ultimate slavery to the system. It matters not that the billions the GEs, Becthels and Halliburtons make in Iraq - it goes into the elite coffers - not yours and mine. The fact that we are being impoverished by credit debt and continually refinanced mortgages; the fact that our currency is losing value, prices are rising, wages are flat, the economy is stagnating - the elites are doing the same thing to us as they did to the rest of the world. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Just look around at your friends, their parents and their children and you will see what the statistics tell us. We are becoming a third world, debtor society with a few at the top who have made it.
Should we be surprised? Not if we read our Bibles. There is a system in place to get us to believe that black is white and white is black, that we are the good guys helping the world, that we have the best system and only mean the best for everyone. If we believe the lies told us on a daily basis, we will surely be deceived.
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About the Author The author has 30 years international development experience and has worked in 40 plus countries around the world. He holds two Masters Degrees and is a PhD Candidate with specialization in business, and international finance, and is founder of www.the-tribulation-network.com.