Tea Party en attendant la chute

Tea Party en attendant la chute

Dans The Telegraph du 13 novembre 2010, Edmund Conway attribue l’essentiel de l’échec du G20 de Séoul et de la paralysie actuelle de la situation économique générale, avec l’impasse au niveau monétaire et des échanges, à la situation des USA. A cette paralysie de l’économie et à cette impasse dans les relations entre les différents acteurs nationaux, correspondent d’abord la paralysie et l’impasse survenues aux USA, avec les élections mid-term, avec l’irruption de Tea Party sur la scène officielle washingtonienne.

L’élément psychologique formidable introduit par ces événements (Tea Party) dans la direction politique US est effectivement celui d’une réelle incapacité à affirmer une position dans ces questions internationales selon la position traditionnelle US (libre échange et politique de globalisation). Le concept de libre échange aux USA n’a jamais été aussi impopulaire depuis 14 ans (la crise de confiance qui marqua les USA entre 1991 et 1996). Selon Conway, cette situation empêche de “gérer” d’une façon dynamique le déclin de la puissance US et la mise en place de la puissance chinoise au premier rang dans le système international…

«…The G20’s problem is less over specific arguments about the level of currencies and more about the fact that the world’s monetary system is being run in two incompatible ways.

»What makes it worse is that there is no longer a consensus view about who is right: before the crisis Western politicians could argue confidently that China’s mercantilist policies were simply wrong. But why shouldn’t emerging nations shield their industries from international competition to allow them to develop into full-grown businesses – just as Britain and the US did in a similar stage in their development?

»So not only has the international monetary structure broken down; so has the intellectual grounding that might reveal a solution. This wasn’t such an issue in the 1940s, when John Maynard Keynes and US delegate Harry Dexter White could lock themselves away in a New England ski resort; it didn’t matter in the 1870s when central bankers could safely negotiate the terms of the Gold Standard away from the prying eyes of the populace. But this time around democracy is intruding.

»In the US, the White House is still reeling after the mid-term elections, in which the Democrats suffered the biggest turnover of members since 1954. It wasn’t merely the scale of the defeat – which is even more stark when you look down to state and county level – or indeed the fact that the White House will no longer be able easily to pass its laws, but that the new intake of Republican politicians (the Tea Party wing in particular) is viscerally opposed to the country’s current economic policies.

»The Republicans used to be the party of the Washington Consensus, of free trade and deregulation – in short, supporting Globalisation III. No longer: a recent Pew Research Center report found that the Republican party is now more anti-free trade than the Democrats. Many of the Tea Party’s leading voices want an abolition of the Federal Reserve. The message from the mid-terms was that these voices can no longer safely be ignored. And if the US itself can’t work out a plan to overhaul the international economy, what hope is there for the rest of us?

»It is not that anyone is inherently right or wrong. But the worst outcome would be to lurch from one extreme to another without a coherent plan…. […]

»In the wake of the G20 flop, it strikes me that there are two conceivable endgames to the current stalemate on international economic reform. Neither, I should warn you, is particularly attractive. The first is that it will only be after another crisis (perhaps sovereign debt, perhaps a full-blown currency war) that world leaders will confront the issue and try to create a coherent international monetary system. The second is the theory of hegemonic stability: periods of chaos such as this usually come when one economic superpower gives way to another.

»No matter what rules or structures policy makers try to erect, the overriding instability caused by these shifts in global economic tectonics mean that we must wait until China fully surpasses the US before we can expect a return to stability.»

Cette position de faiblesse extrême des USA est mise en évidence d’une façon agressive par le Washington Times, qui poursuit, dans son éditorial du 13 novembre 2010 son pilonnage anti-Obama, par l’observation de l’absence complète d’influence du président US au G20… C’est confirmer, dans des termes plus violents, l’analyse de Conway sur la position générale des USA.

«World leaders may indeed like Mr. Obama on a personal level, but that has little to do with his stature as a national leader. Machiavelli's dictum that it is better for a head of state to be feared than loved still applies, and it is clear that there is no reason for any country to fear the affable Mr. Obama.

»The president again casually confirmed his belief in the decline of America's “outsized” influence in world affairs, noting, “We are now seeing a situation where a whole host of other countries are doing well and coming into their own and naturally they're going to be more assertive.” The president thinks this greater assertiveness is “a healthy thing” but did not elaborate for whom it was healthy – certainly not the United States. For some inexplicable reason, Mr. Obama welcomes the decline of America's role on the international stage. It is his most notable accomplishment. […]

»The question is not whether Mr. Obama's influence on the world is increasing or decreasing. It is rather whether he has any meaningful influence on important world events at all.»

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