TEAM AMERIKA - WORLD POLICE
By IAIN FRASER GRIGOR
THE TRULY EXTRAORDINARY thing about the United States of America is that it is still a democracy. There is, of course, no typographic device in English to introduce in the wake of such a proposition an extended period of glacially en-frosted aphasia: but any old syntactic structure, independent in its entirety from the conventions of semantic coherence, will doubtless serve adequately in its place.
In the dying embers of the Years of the Bush, naturally, any proposition that includes the words America and democracy may well be a confusing one: but the proof of the proposition eloquently lies in a book such as this. After all, the United States - more than any other on earth - can lay claim to a dazzling plurality of informed and extremely critical opinion with regard to that country's activities at home and abroad. And the thesis of Antonia Juhasz's The Bush Agenda is very firmly in that great tradition.
Juhasz is principally an economist, specialising in international finance and global trade. In this book, she "exposes a radical corporate globalisation agenda more befitting of a ruthless empire than a world leader of democracy. The agenda has been refined by leading members and allies of the Bush administration over decades and has reached its most aggressive implementation under George W. Bush".
And Juhasz adds, "This agenda predates the current president, however, and its advocates certainly hope that it will outlast him. Within the Bush Agenda, `freer trade for a freer world' refers to specific economic policies designed especially to support key US multinational corporations that are used as veritable weapons of war".
She says that the American occupation and destruction of Iraq represents the fullest and most relentless applications of the Bush Agenda to date - but it is only a beginning. What has primarily driven US policy in recent years is a plan for an ever-expanding and invincible American empire, driven by the growing power of the nation's largest multinationals and unrivalled military power (or the American military seems to think it is without rival, anyway).
"`Free trade' and `free markets' were synonymous with `freedom', and the United States was willing to implement this theory with military force. It was pure imperial ambition, which the advocates of the Bush Agenda had been waiting decades to implement".
So far, so simple, then. Juhasz charts the development of America's astonishing plan for total domination of the globe's markets and military power, notably in the Project for the New American Century. She also considers how the agencies of this domination - the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund - have impoverished much of the world in the cause of American greed.
Juhasz takes a chapter for an examination in some detail of four of the leading US corporations with extensive links to government and the military. These are Bechtel (engineering and construction), Lockheed Martin (weapons of war and mass destruction), Halliburton (oil and gas services), and Chevron (oil production and environmental disaster).
Juhasz is particularly enlightening on Iraq, quoting John Gibson (chief executive of Halliburton), as saying that he hoped Iraq would be the first domino to fall and that Libya and Iraq would follow. And Juhasz adds, "Iraq represents several things to these players; oil, wealth, regional power and global power. The corporations would gain access to the world's second largest oil supply and all of the wealth it generates, and the politicians would have their `new Iran' - a regional ally from which to protect Israel and guarantee US access and hegemony over the entire region as well as much of the world".
Hence the staggeringly profitable invasion of Iraq in the cause of the US corporations, and the designation of the new colony as a jumping-off point from which to dominate the entire Middle East, in the cause of American capitalism, and in the form of the US - Middle East Free Trade Area. This Area would include five states owning over half of the world's known oil reserves - Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
As Juhasz says, "It is economic imperialism in its truest form: governments the world over are forced to adopt economic policies that benefit the growth and power of one nation with a threat of military action if they do not accede, all in the name of `world peace'".
In all, Juhasz describes the devastating effects that America's corporate globalisation have had across the world in recent years from South Korea to India, Zambia to Russia, Argentina to South Africa, Nigeria to Ecuador, Mexico to China, and Iraq to the United States itself. She says that the Bush administration has contributed to the world its own imperial and military aggressive variant of corporate globalisation - yielding the most violent response to US policies in more than thirty years.
The Bush Agenda is stylish and passionate and well-produced by Regan Books (a division of Harper Collins, no less). It is easy to read, and its thesis - though a rather demanding and detailed one - is entirely accessible. The reader is left to wonder, however, what happens if the Republicans win next year's presidential election (as they might).
Or what if the Democrats win (as they might)? What happens if it is Obama (African father, American mother) in the White House? How radical is he really? How radical can he afford to be? The crypto-fascists who presently run the United States will not go away, after all. Can the juggernaut of Team Amerika be turned over and taken apart overnight? Can it be turned over and taken apart at all? With bated breath, the world awaits .....
www.iain-fraser-grigor.co.uk
