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Today's
Stories
October 21,
2004
Lisa Britto
and Lucía Suarez
Bolivia:
a Year After the October Insurrection
October 20,
2004
Yitzhak Laor
"Did
You Two Squabble?": a Bullet Fired for Every Palestinian
Child
Jason Leopold
Sinclair
Broadcasting's Air War: a Long History of Journalistic Deception
Jesse Sharkey
A
Teacher's Account of How Military Recruiters Prey on High School
Students
Col. Dan Smith
Choking
Free Speech About the Draft
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Using My Religion
David Vest
If
Bush Wins, Blame Me
Jack Random
The Jackson 17: Reflections on a Mutiny
Ron Jacobs
Time
to Kick It Up a Notch
James Brittain
Plan Patriota and the FARC: a Change in the Countryside?
Christopher
Dols
Bombing Madison: Michael Moore's Fright Fest
Dave Lindorff
First They Came for the Nurses...
Website of
the Day
Banana Republican Catalogue
October 19,
2004
Jeff Taylor
Confessions
of a Swing State Voter
Matt Vidal
American
Myopia: "More Money in Your Pocket"
Victor Kattan
"It's Not Who You're Against; It's Who You're For":
Palestine Takes Center Stage At Euro Social Forum
William Loren
Katz
What Goes Around Comes Around
Sean Carter
O'Reilly Should Shut Up About Extortion Claiims
CounterPunch Wire
Who's Really in Bed with Republican Funders: Kerry or Nader?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Party
Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
October 18,
2004
Saul Landau
Facts
and Lies; Slogans and Truth
Dave Lindorff
Bulletin
on the Bush Bulge
Diane Christian
Sheep
and Goats: On the Language of Goodness
Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency
Uri Avnery
Ariel
Sharon's Philosophy
Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank
Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post
Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
October 21, 2004
Are They Really
Connected?
The
War and Globalization
By
MARK ENGLER
To be radical, in the oldest sense of
the word, is to go to the root. One strength of truly progressive
analysis is that it places what appear to be isolated events
in a larger context. It seeks to make connections between seemingly
disparate political issues by revealing underlying ideological
frameworks.
And so it has been a central
task, in the post 9-11 era, for activists to demonstrate how
the war against terror and the drive for corporate globalization
are one and the same--how peace and global justice movements
share vital common ground. That these two issues are connected,
in a fundamental way, is an article of faith on the political
left, reinforced by the fact that many participants in globalization
protests have also mobilized against the Bush administration's
militarism.
All such articles of faith
deserve a bit of critical skepticism, so I would like to offer
a constructive challenge. Many of the arguments wedding the war
in Iraq with a strategy for neoliberal expansion are not readily
convincing. They risk reading causality into tangential relationships.
And, in their drive to connect, they overlook important disjunctures
between the Bush administration's foreign policy and the policy
preferred by many business elites. Activists have good reason
to look again at the neoconservative hawks now in power and to
consider whether they have outdone the corporate globalists of
earlier years or whether they have betrayed them.
Arguing
for a Link
Let's start by examining some
of the strongest arguments for the link between the war on terror
and corporate globalization. First, the White House has been
eager to make big business a partner in the execution of the
Iraq War and the subsequent occupation. This has been most prominently
evidenced by the high-priced reconstruction contracts snatched
up by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Bechtel.
Second, the president has advanced
a neoliberal agenda domestically by cutting taxes for the wealthy
and further eroding social safety nets. His administration has
employed the rhetoric of the war on terror to attack unions--most
notably in the summer of 2002, when it threatened to intervene
for "national security" purposes in a West Coast dock
workers strike. Activists are also correct to note that the war
abroad has been used to suppress dissent at home. Of the $87
billion passed by Congress last October for the occupation of
Iraq, $8.5 million went for policing the protests in Miami opposing
the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Moreover conservatives
attack both antiwar and globalization protesters as unpatriotic
and helpful to terrorists.
Finally, activists have seen
a connection between war and corporate globalization in the privatization
of Iraq's economy. Political commentators Naomi Klein and Antonia
Juhasz, among others, have detailed how the occupation of Iraq
allowed the U.S. governing authority to restructure the country's
economy based on strict neoliberal principles. Following what
The Economist magazine called a "wish-list that foreign
investors and donor agencies dream of for developing markets,"
Washington instituted measures providing for the privatization
of 200 Iraqi state firms, for 100% foreign ownership in Iraqi
companies outside the oil production and refinement sectors,
for full repatriation of profits, and for a 15% cap on corporate
taxes.
Juhasz explains in a July 2004
article for Foreign Policy in Focus entitled "The
Hand-Over that Wasn't" that the executive orders issued
by U.S. administrator Paul Bremer will be difficult to overturn,
even though a transfer of sovereignty has officially taken place.
Not only is the interim government prohibited " from taking
'any actions affecting Iraq's destiny' beyond the election of
an Iraqi government," but, Juhasz writes, the occupiers
have stacked "every Ministry with U.S.-appointed authorities
with five-year terms--well into the period of the new, elected
government."
How Deep
a Connection?
Although these attempts to
link neoconservative militarism and corporate globalization have
merit, each of them has important weaknesses. First, consider
war profiteering. Although corporations do exhibit shameless
opportunism in seizing business opportunities created by U.S.
military action, this does not connect war and globalization
in a deep way. As Robert Jensen recently argued in his critique
of Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's over-reliance on this
argument both leads to a weak explanation of the causes of war
and overlooks Democratic Party patronage of the military-industrial
complex:
"A family member of a
soldier who died asks, 'for what?' and Moore cuts to the subject
of war profiteering.... [ D]oes Moore really want us to believe
that a major war was launched so that Halliburton and other companies
could increase its profits for a few years? Yes, war profiteering
happens, but it is not the reason nations go to war. This kind
of distorted analysis helps keep viewers' attention focused on
the Bush administration... not the routine way in which corporate
America makes money off the misnamed Department of Defense, no
matter who is in the White House."
A focus on profiteering risks
ignoring the stated neoconservative goal of reinforcing U.S.
hegemony in the Middle East and beyond, something far more significant
than short-term kickbacks to corporate sponsors. Also, it assumes
that the objectives of specific businesses like Halliburton and
U.S. arms contractors accurately reflect the general interests
of all multinational corporations, an idea that deserves scrutiny.
As for the "war at home,"
there is no question that the Bush administration has used the
specter of terrorism to push a regressive domestic agenda. However,
this can also be considered opportunistic behavior rather than
evidence of a systematic relationship between war and globalization.
Republican realists who opposed the invasion of Iraq have generally
promoted tax cuts and the Patriot Act, while many stalwart globalizers
from the Clinton administration have fought these domestic measures.
There is little reason to think that war in Iraq was a necessary
condition for advancing Bush's domestic neoliberalism, even if
it provided politically convenient cover for many actions.
Does Capital
Gain?
The forced privatization of
Iraq's economy provides the most vivid link between war and neoliberalism.
Yet to determine whether this restructuring is representative
of a larger trend--of a new phase of corporate globalization
in which the "freeing" of markets will be more militaristically
regulated--we must look at the wider state of trade and development
policy under George W. Bush. Activists often point to the president
himself as a bridge between globalization and militarism, as
someone who vocally supports both free trade and preemptive war.
However, the Bush administration's actions in the trade arena
have often contradicted its rhetoric, distinguishing it from
its globalist predecessors.
Globalization has always been
a vague term, employed for many different purposes. Confusion
over the use of the word has often muddled analysis of the state
of the global economy. In the 1990s, "corporate globalization"
most frequently referred to a "rules-based" international
order, designed for the benefit of multinational corporations
and regulated primarily by a set of multilateral financial institutions.
Particularly since September
11, 2001, Bush's globalization policy has been quite different
from what characterized the Clinton years. As in its military
actions, the current administration has shown a penchant for
go-it-alone nationalism in its economic negotiations. This has
led to a type of bare-knuckles promotion of U.S. interests distinct
from the multilateralist model of global capitalism advanced
in the 1990s. As a result of this shift, as well as a concurrent
global economic downturn, trade talks in recent years have been
combative, tense, and often unproductive.
Actually, much of the business
elite would prefer Clinton's multilateralist globalization to
Bush's imperial version. Prior to the war, many corporate leaders
feared that the invasion of Iraq would be bad for business. Writing
from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in February
2003, Newsday reporter Laurie Garrett observed that "
The rich--whether they are French or Chinese or just about anybody--are
livid about the Iraq crisis primarily because they believe it
will sink their financial fortunes." Noted Garrett, "When
Colin Powell gave the speech of his life, trying to win over
the non-American delegates, the sharpest attack on his comments
came not from Amnesty International or some Islamic representative--it
came from the head of the largest bank in the Netherlands !"
And corporate worries persisted
as the war effort went forward. After the invasion had begun,
the Washington Post reported on March 23, 2003, that:
"Discord over the Iraq War is putting uncomfortable strains
on economic links between the United States and Europe, a relationship
that many view as a cornerstone of global prosperity. Guardians
of transatlantic harmony are scrambling to keep the diplomatic
rift from poisoning economic ties." The article continued,
"the animosity that has flared of late appears almost certain
to seep into transatlantic trade and investment issues."
Of greatest concern in the
Washington Post article was "that lingering acrimony
among top policymakers will spark tit-for-tat trade wars, and
wreck the U.S.-European cooperation needed to strike a worldwide
trade accord that could help spur global growth." A 2002-03
dispute over U.S. steel tariffs provides a prime illustration
of just such a trade war. President Bush's March 2002 decision
to institute protective tariffs against foreign steel sparked
harsh rebukes and an immediate complaint to the World Trade Organization
(WTO) by the European Union, Brazil, China, Japan, Korea, New
Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland. The WTO ultimately ruled against
the tariffs in November 2003.
Similarly, nationalist resistance
on the part of the United States to opening its markets played
a major role in deadlocking talks at last September's WTO ministerial
in Cancún, Mexico. Since then, the institution has floundered.
The same U.S. intransigence appeared again at November's FTAA
ministerial in Miami, derailing the once-seemingly inevitable
trade pact and forcing Washington to pursue much smaller, bilateral
agreements with individual nations.
One can argue that the Bush
administration's economic nationalism has effectively defended
U.S. interests, but few will contend that it has bolstered the
international financial institutions that globalization protesters
in the past identified as leading evils. And not many European
corporations or other multinational enterprises based outside
the United States--previously stalwart partners in the global
expansion of corporate power--will praise current American economic
policy.
McDonald's
and McDonnell Douglas
Returning to the case of Iraq,
there is no question that the U.S. occupying authority has opportunistically
used its power to impose "free market" reforms on Iraq's
economy. But this alone is not reason to assume that Bush's militarism
represents the new face of globalization. In fact, this assumption
has produced some wobbly analysis. For example, Arundhati Roy
has argued that it was international grassroots pressure against
the advance of corporate globalization that forced those in power
to adopt a more militaristic posture. In a January 2003 address
to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Roy argued:
"We may not have stopped [empire] in its tracks--yet--but
we have stripped it down. We have made it drop its mask. We have
forced it into the open. It now stands before us on the world's
stage in all its brutish, iniquitous nakedness."
There are several problems
with this assertion. First, it closely equates empire and corporate
globalization with U.S. nationalist ambitions, something quite
different from the usual global justice interpretation of a dominant
corporate empire that operates largely outside the power of a
diminished nation-state. Roy's analysis leaves little room for
businesspeople who would argue that Bush's economic nationalism
and warmongering make for bad capitalism and that global corporations
would be better off with a Clinton- or Kerry-style multilateralist
in office. It also contradicts the viewpoint that Iraq was an
elective war, waged in pursuit of an extreme neoconservative
ideological vision of U.S. dominance that is out of step not
just with leftists but with the approach favored by most business
and foreign policy elites. And Roy's assertion can lead one to
overlook the fact that the more subtle mechanisms of corporate
globalization--i.e., conditions imposed by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank--are still functioning quietly
and effectively, constraining the potentially autonomous economic
policy of countries like Brazil, for example.
If anything, social movement
pressure is probably forcing empire back into its closet. In
recent months, President Bush has scrambled to internationalize
the occupation of Iraq and to temper his nationalism in trade
talks, bringing institutions like the UN and IMF back onto center
stage in his foreign policy. If John Kerry is elected in November,
he will no doubt push even further in a multilateralist direction
in both arenas, a move that will comfort many businesspeople.
In his 1999 book The Lexus
and the Olive Tree, New York Times columnist Thomas
Friedman wrote: "The hidden hand of the market will never
work without a hidden fist.... McDonald's cannot flourish without
McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And
the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's
technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force,
Navy and Marine Corps."
Activists have frequently quoted
this view, coming from a mainstream observer, as vindication
of their arguments linking militarism and corporate expansion.
However, it is important to note that Friedman was writing about
the Clinton years, an era in which a multilateral consensus around
a post-Cold War U.S. military dominance was being carefully cultivated.
The Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 decision to take the
fist out of hiding and wield it in a widely unpopular war significantly
shook the international order that for years had provided a climate
of business stability. In doing so, President Bush has arguably
illustrated the manner in which McDonald's and McDonnell Douglas's
interests collide. Indeed, by privileging specific sectors of
the U.S. economy such as energy companies and arms contractors,
the White House has rattled the global marketplace in which U.S.
financial capital and consumer-based industries must operate.
Competing
Globalizations
Part of the confusion surrounding
the analysis of Iraq comes from sloppy use of the term "globalization."
Dissenters to the neoliberal order have long argued that they
are not opposed to globalization, but are advocates of a very
different type of globalization than that favored by corporate
free traders or IMF economists; namely, a globalization of justice
and solidarity. Appreciating this lesson about the diversity
of globalizations also requires recognizing that the spectrum
of national and business interests are not entirely united in
their vision of an ideal world order. Diverse nations and corporations
often present competing interests. Clinton's corporate version
of globalization and Bush's imperial one are less a continuous
progression in foreign policy than they are dissonant visions
of international economics. The current administration's militarism
is not linked to Clinton's rules-based economic order; rather
it represents a departure from it that may soon be reversed.
In this case, it may be most
useful to move beyond the concept of globalization altogether
and look for a deeper level of connection. Ultimately, there
is an ongoing need to develop coherent theories of how the struggle
to control limited oil reserves will shape the future of capitalist
economics. (The war in Iraq is related to this, not because it
is a bid to seize ownership of Iraq's oil fields, but because
it is another step in Washington's protracted efforts to manipulate
and control Middle Eastern politics.) It is also important to
consider how war plays into the boom-and-bust business cycle
that has long affected both the U.S. and global economies.
To refocus on these questions
can open a new discussion about war and the global economy, one
not commonly featured in current antiwar critiques. Combating
the crass corporate favoritism and neoconservative aggression
of the Bush administration is a worthy goal in its own right.
But because there are many who will oppose George Bush while
eagerly anticipating a return to the high times of an earlier
neoliberalism, the struggle to build an alternative globalization
will continue for many Novembers to come.
Mark Engler, a writer based in New York, is a
commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus. He can be reached at
http://www.DemocracyUprising.com.
Research assistance for this article was provided by Jason Rowe.
Weekend
Edition Features for October 16 / 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
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