TTIP and TPP vs Eurasian Integration: 

 

TTIP and TPP vs Eurasian Integration

If official reports are to be believed, US President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Europe covered
everything except for what was actually at the heart of the
discussions, namely the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP).

For
Obama, whose foreign policy successes look pathetic even compared to
those of his predecessor George W Bush, it is vitally important that he
finishes his presidency with a bang, especially since, by his own
admission, prospects for the future of the TTIP will be extremely
uncertain once the White House changes hands.

And
it is not even that Donald Trump, who is openly critical of the global
ambitions of the current American elite, has a chance of becoming
president. There will also be problems should Hillary Clinton become
president, even though, like Obama, she represents the interests of
transnational corporations and is a great believer in the idea of US
global dominance. The election campaign currently underway in the US has
already shown that the electorate is willing to place the interests of
the US as a nation state above the imperial ambitions of the elite and
large corporations. Trump is not the only one to have expressed this
trend, there is also Bernie Sanders and even, to some extent, the number
two in the Republican race, Ted Cruz. Even if she wins, therefore,
Hillary Clinton will be forced to take this point of view into account,
particularly as it will only gain her supporters over time.

Europe’s
leaders (with the exception of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK
Prime Minister David Cameron, perhaps) are also not full of enthusiasm
at the prospect of their countries becoming colonial appendages to a US
monopoly, especially as the majority of countries in Europe also have
elections coming up. So if Obama actually succeeds in concluding the
TTIP, he will be able to feel like a winner. Along with the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
agreement signed between the US and 11 countries of the Asia-Pacific
region in October 2015, the outgoing US president will be able to take
credit for creating a hugely powerful American-centric system that
engulfs the whole of Eurasia from the West and the East and subordinates
a number of developed or successfully developing national economies to
American (or rather multinational) capital, with a view to the
strangulation or subsequent subordination of those countries left out of
the TTIP and TPP – primarily China, Russia, India and a number of
others.