H S on Fri, 1 Feb 2002 15:16:02 +0100 (CET) |
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[Nettime-bold] Militairy capitalism |
Dear Nettime,
State of the Union and we immediately see the
outline of the coming of militairy capitalism, described by:
*** ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS ***
By Tom Barry (Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201onward.html .) President Bush went to Capitol Hill to tell the American people and their representatives that the U.S. is committed to protecting "the civilized world against unprecedented dangers." These threats issue from "an axis of evil" that spans the globe. Riding on his popularity as commander-in-chief, Bush framed his State of the Union address as a new vision for U.S. foreign policy. Are U.S. policymakers ready to pursue world war against evil? Apparently so. The applause for this aggressive new view of U.S. foreign and military policy rose enthusiastically from both sides of the aisle during the State of the Union address. Afterward, in his televised response to the president, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt assured Americans that Democrats stood "shoulder-to-shoulder" with the administration in its global military campaign. Such support is not limited to political elites. Opinions polls show significant support for taking military action against countries like Iraq and Somalia. A rapture of patriotism, triumphalism, and militarism has seized America. But, as Bush delivered his call for more war, not everyone was clapping. Listening closely, you could hear the hissing. Looking around, you could see the dissension and disgust. No, not on Capitol Hill, but around the world where Bush is counting on "our allies" to join America's expanded crusade. His description of the U.S. commitment to use "freedom's power" to bring peace and prosperity to the entire world may ring true for many Americans. But for much of the rest of the world, any new assertion of U.S. might and right is greeted with skepticism. This week at the World Social Forum in Brazil, tens of thousands of activists will be speaking for the world's disadvantaged and disenfranchised. Bush's promise to spread freedom and prosperity in the wake of his global war will be rejected, and rightly so, as imperial drivel. In Porto Alegre, as elsewhere, there will be great sympathy for the American victims of terror. But it will also be noted that U.S.-led globalization strategies, such as those embraced by Argentina, are leading to economic and social disintegration the world over--and widening a global divide. At the World Social Forum, questions will be raised about whether another $48 billion in the U.S. military budget will increase global peace and security--or whether this new U.S. military spending will, as it has it the past, fan the flames of war between and within states. The world does indeed face unprecedented dangers. But on the other side of the deepening international divide between economic status and worldviews, terrorism is just one of the many new threats to international peace, stability, and development. For the most part, the other dangers are not ones that can be met with U.S. firepower and weapons superiority. President Bush would have gone a long way toward narrowing the global divide if he had moved beyond the platitudes about America's commitment to freedom to assert a new U.S. commitment to rein in corporate power, join the campaign to end world hunger, build democratic means of global governance, and confront the pressing challenge of climate change. Like Gephardt, many Americans stand shoulder-to-shoulder as the nation marches forward--intervening wherever it chooses, spending whatever it takes, and blithely accepting the collateral damage. But the U.S. government may soon find that its allies are few, that popular support for the new jingoism is shallow, that victories will be few, and that evil often dwells within. "History," said Bush, called America to action. But if we embrace militarism, as the president advises, history will not judge us kindly. (Tom Barry <tom@irc-online.org> is codirector of Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org).) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - *** STATE OF THE UNION: POINT/COUNTERPOINT *** By Stephen Zunes (Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201sou.html .) President George W. Bush's State of the Union address on January 29, 2002 was the first in many years to focus primarily on foreign policy. Despite widespread accolades in the media and strong bipartisan support in Congress, a careful examination of the language and assumptions in the address raise disturbing questions about the direction of U.S. foreign policy under the current administration. What follows are some excerpts consisting of the majority of the speech addressing foreign policy issues and interspersed with some critical commentary. This should not be interpreted as in any way minimizing the very real danger from terrorism, or the need for a decisive response, nor to imply that Bush administration policy regarding terrorism and other foreign policy issues has been totally negative. Yet the failure to recognize the misleading verbiage and to recognize the dangerous implications of such words--however eloquent and reassuring to a nation that has experienced such trauma in recent months--will not only make us less safe from the threat of terrorism, but will deprive Americans of our greatest defense and asset: our freedom to question and challenge government policies that are not in the best interests of our country and the world. "States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. None of these states are among the most heavily armed countries in their regions, let alone the world. Similarly, unlike such U.S. allies as Morocco, Israel, and Turkey, none of these states currently occupies any neighboring country. It is particularly disturbing that Iran, in its significant if uneven steps toward greater political pluralism and rapprochement with the West, is linked with the hostile totalitarian regimes of Iraq and North Korea. "By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic. The United States has consistently opposed calls for the creation of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction for both East Asia and the Middle East. The Bush administration is continuing the U.S. policy of nuclear apartheid, where the United States may bring nuclear weapons into the region on its planes and ships and U.S. allies like Israel, Pakistan, and India are able to develop nuclear weapons, but other countries can not. While all three of these countries singled out by President Bush have been linked to terrorist groups in the past, none have ties to Al-Qaeda and there has been no evidence to support the contention that they would pass on weapons of mass destruction to individual terrorists. "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons. A worthy goal, except that there is no evidence that these regimes have such weapons to threaten us with or are anywhere close to procuring them. There are far more real dangers to be concerned with facing America and the world already, including AIDS, environmental destruction, growing inequality, and other threats which were not even mentioned in the president's address. "America will lead by defending liberty and justice, because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere. No nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them. We have no intention of imposing our culture, but America will always stand firm for the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance. This from an administration which provides large-scale military, economic, and diplomatic support to the reactionary, misogynist, fundamentalist regime in Saudi Arabia, not to mention Israeli occupation forces in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and Moroccan forces in occupied Western Sahara. Indeed, according to Amnesty International, the majority of recipients of arms transfers from the United States engage in a pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations. Regarding the denial of imposing culture, one only need look at U.S. pressure at the World Trade Organization to eliminate safeguards protecting indigenous film industries and other cultural institutions from U.S.-based multinational corporations. "Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life. Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom's price; we have shown freedom's power, and in this great conflict, my fellow Americans, we will see freedom's victory. It will be very difficult for freedom to triumph if America's closest allies in the war include such regimes as the family dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, the medieval sultanate in Oman, the crypto-Communist autocracy in Uzbekistan, and the military dictatorship in Pakistan. Indeed, it has been U.S. backing of such regimes which has been partly responsible for the rise of anti-American extremism in those parts of the world. (Stephen Zunes <stephen@coho.org> is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.) |