What other tools apart from military power has the US used to try to enforce its domination?
The US also tried to use global institutions to impose rules that would benefit US corporations—the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). We in Asia are very familiar with this. Washington and the IMF wanted to promote the free flow of capital into our countries—that provoked the speculative crisis in 1997 when many of our economies collapsed. Then the US used the IMF to try to restructure our economies so they would be receptive to the inflow of American investment and American goods. That has backfired now—the policies were so bad in terms of their impact on the people that for instance the Thai government in 2003 paid off the IMF and said never again are we going to contract loans from this institution. Now the IMF is in real trouble because its budget used to be funded by repayments of loans. Big borrowers are no longer borrowing so you have a funding crisis. The same thing applies to the WTO. This was conceived by Washington as the institution t
