The recent news about EP3, a spy plane, landing on Hainan Province together with all the analysis in US media...spun by the Bush Administration...is part of the Child's History of the World which American Citizens learn and believe.

The truth of the matter is that the spy plane and the 24 young, relatively innocent Americans on it are part of a gigantic policing system placed around the world beginning in 1948 with the famous speech by Winston Churchill at a small American college in Missouri in which he laid the foundation for the Cold War and the hegemony of some 15 wealthy capitalist countries. Truman was president of the USA at the time and began the transformation of the CIA from a small time operation known as OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, into a giant political tool with which to destabilize movements of social justice around the world.

The Korean War was the first major effort and harbinger of some 80 serious military excursions to come which would make the world safe for the industrial, financial and commercial firms of those 15 or so wealthy countries.

In the Hainan incident, the Bush Administration pronounced the use of low level flights close to the territorial waters of China were designed to serve American Security Interests and ensure the peace of the Pacific Rim Area. This is true enough as far as it goes; and in the US media, it seldom goes further.

The better truth is that the flights were designed to provoke China so intelligence specialists at the NSA could 'read' electronic signals; radar, infra-red, short wave and new tactics in the Chinese 'order of battle' from the Chinese military response. The better truth is that most of that electronic espionage could be handled by spy satellites, by off-shore ships, by military installations in Japan, Korea and Taiwan...those flights were not/ are not essential to spying operations of the USA...despite Pentagon and Bush Administration claims. But it is a fool's game to talk about the spy flights on terms set by and only by US government, US media, or US allies.

A better analysis is that there are some 3000 multi-national corporations are the chief beneficiary of peace, stability as well as the restriction of revolutionary movements in the 100 or so poor capitalist/feudal/tribal countries from which profits, foods and raw materials are extracted and shipped to Europe, to Japan, to Korea, to Taiwan, and to the USA.  These MNC's have bought or rent or bribe the political process around the world.  The interests of MNC's are profits, growth, control of markets and control of any social movement or law or policy which interferes with their free trade in goods, services, labor, raw materials and the movement of investment capital.

Nation-states used to be the ruling political-economic units in an increasingly globalized political economy but, with the advent of transnational banking, stock markets, finance and investment groups, the nation-state is no longer home base for any given private capitalist corporation or any given cluster of corporations...the six or so private petroleum companies which produce and distribute oil products no longer see Great Britain, the Netherlands, the USA or Norway as its homeland. The same is increasingly true of auto companies, pharmaceutical companies, cereal distributors or electronic goods.

Still it is the nation-state which is the chief agent of social control against movements of social justice, however badly designed. And it is the USA which inherited the mantle of police-man of the world after WWII...when all competing powers were devastated by bombing, reparations or occupying troops...mostly American.

But the nation-state is, again, not the direct beneficiary of the flow of profits, food and oil. Multi-national corporations increasingly find that European, American and Pacific nation-states protect their workers, restrict pollutions, levy taxes and control monopolies...all of which increase costs and lower profits...so, increasingly, trans-national corporations move factories to desperately poor countries with low wages, bribable officials and corrupt military leaders while they move headquarters to 'user-friendly' off-shore tax havens.

This means that wealthy capitalist countries face increasing costs while they find fewer and fewer corporations to share the tax burdens of policing the world.  As my good colleage, Bill Mandel points out, corporations could serve as tax base for programs of social justice and, as he notes, do in Europe and in North America.  But the long-term trend is for capital to control its costs and to increase profits...and taxes are a cost to be avoided.

So...the middle classes become the natural targets of taxation; the natural victims of the new capitalist system and the chief political base for 'tax reform' and reduction of programs of social justice in Europe, North America and Australia.

And the World Bank along with the International Monetary Fund become the chief political tools with which to control what few impulses toward social justice become registered in political regimes in 'developing' capitalist countries.

The flight of the spy plane is part of this larger, cataclysmic transformation of the political economy of the world...and, for both China and the USA, it is a propaganda bonanza...the Chinese use it to prop up a repressive politics while it promotes ruthless economic policies...policies designed to produce ever more goods with cheap labor and transport them to wealthy markets in Europe and North America.

For the USA, the 'retention' of 24 relatively innocent young military persons provide the Bush Administration with the kind of cultural capital which wipes out critical comment in the media and mass politics alike....and preserves for another few years, the uncritical support of a huge military machine and its complementary intelligence gathering arm at NSA.

TR Young, Historian for Adults Only