Bush's National Security Document
What drives U.S. capital to adventurism
By Fred Goldstein
"The National Security Document of the United States," which
codifies the Bush doctrine of the New World Order, was leaked
to the New York Times on Sept. 19, before it was scheduled to
be submitted to Congress. The source of the leak may be a
matter of speculation, but it was timed to coincide with the
debate over the launching of an unprovoked war of outright
aggression against Iraq.
It also came just days after German Minister of Justice
Herta Daubler-Gmelin is said to have declared that President
George W. Bush was using the Iraq war to divert attention from
problems at home, just as Hitler did. This statement caused
consternation in Washington. Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder, who
won the election despite a barrage of criticism from the U.S.,
then fired the justice minister as bourgeois commentators
everywhere complained how outrageous it was to compare Bush to
Adolph Hitler.
To be sure, Hitler was a fascist dictator who came to power
in 1933 in a situation of extreme social crisis. The economic
depression was leading to a civil war between the workers and
the capitalist class in which the question of which class would
wield power was emerging.
Hitler consolidated his power, after being named chancellor,
by unleashing his storm troopers to carry out the bloody
suppression of millions of communists, socialists and
progressives and the destruction of trade unions and all forms
of working-class organization, using the dual themes of
anti-Bolshevism and anti-Semitism.
Today there is no generalized social crisis in the U.S. And
even though Bush got into office by stealing the election from
the Democrats, he still presides over a political system of
imperialist democracy. Yes, it is growing increasingly
repressive and reactionary, with stronger incursions by the
military and the FBI. And it is becoming more racist against
people of Middle Eastern origin.
However, the forms of capitalist democracy--for example, the
legal existence of trade unions--still exist for the working
class and the oppressed to utilize in their struggles.
In this respect, there is no comparison. But the minister,
whatever her politics and whatever her motive, was alluding to
a different parallel that bears critical examination.
The problem for German and U.S. capital
Hitler persuaded the German ruling class to let him try to
conquer all of Europe and the Soviet Union. His talk of
establishing a Third Reich to last for a thousand years had a
compelling appeal to the powerful German financiers and
industrial capitalists.
Germany's gigantic, modern and highly militarized industrial
establishment was capable of vast output, but it was
constrained by the other imperialist powers from grabbing the
resource-rich colonial spheres of exploitation and plunder.
Their thirst for the kind of super-profits being sucked out
of the colonized world by Britain, France, Belgium and Holland
was thwarted. In this situation, the prospect of a new economic
and social crisis in Germany persuaded the bankers and the
bosses to back the expansionist military adventurism of the
Nazis.
In addition, they had supreme confidence in the mighty,
modern German military machine, with its advanced rocket
technology, powerful air force and numerous Panzer tank
divisions.
The victory of the Nazis in the domestic counter-revolution
did not solve German imperialism's crisis. It still had to
expand on the world arena.
Promising new areas for exploitation
The Bush administration's National Security Strategy (NSS)
document puts considerable stress on the absolute military
power of the Pentagon. The New York Times of Sept. 20 wrote
that "one of the most striking elements of the new strategy
document is its insistence 'that the president has no intention
of allowing any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead
the United States has opened up since the fall of the Soviet
Union more than a decade ago. ... Our forces will be strong
enough,' Mr. Bush's document states, 'to dissuade potential
adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of
surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.' "
The document is filled with military threats, including the
right to first strike. From the point of view of the right-wing
military geostrategists in the U.S. establishment, this
document reads like their dream come true--even though it is
said that Bush "toned it down" in places because it sounded
"arrogant." So now it doesn't?
But from the point of view of the ruling class--the
industrialists, bankers and monopolists of the
transnationals--other portions of this document also read very
favorably. They find it ever more appealing as the slow-motion
stock market crash proceeds, the phony profit reports and
corporate scandals pile up, and capitalist overproduction,
deflation and a decline of profits haunt the boardrooms.
The bosses and bankers of course prefer "stable" forms of
plunder and exploitation--that work through the automatic
processes of corporate operations supplemented by IMF
extortion, bribery, industrial spying and so on. They will only
opt for adventurism with the prospect of instability when that
is considered the lesser evil compared to a protracted decline
of profits and the prospect of economic collapse.
Ever since the outbreak of the Asian economic crisis in
1998, Federal Reserve Bank head Alan Greenspan and the
financial establishment have been engaged in staving off an
economic crisis. In fact, Greenspan has poured hundreds of
billions of dollars into the economy through direct bailouts
during the 1998-99 period. By lowering interest rates, the Fed
delivered trillions of dollars in cheap money to Wall
Street.
Every area of economy stifled by surplus
A sweeping survey of business conditions in the Washington
Post of Aug. 25 gives a glimpse into what the ruling class has
been facing.
Describing the epidemic of capitalist overproduction, or in
bourgeois terms of "overcapacity," the Post survey says "it can
be found these days in a wide swath: agriculture, autos,
advertising, chemicals, computer hardware and software,
consulting and financial services, forest products, furniture,
mining, retail, steel, textiles, telecommunications, trucking
and electric generation, just to mention a few. In almost every
case, it is accompanied by prices that are flat or falling.
...
"Flush with cheap money made available by Wall Street,
businesses of all sorts rushed out and expanded their
capacity," continued the Post. By now over one quarter of the
industrial establishment is lying dormant--and that figure is
getting higher every day.
For the first time since the 1930s--the Great
Depression--the U.S. economy is facing deflation, which means
fewer profits, less surplus value and eventually vast losses
for the bosses, along with unemployment and hardship for the
working class.
Numerous examples are cited by the Post study. One is the
airline industry: Airline payrolls have been cut by 120,000 in
12 months; another 100,000 layoffs are planned. The Post
reveals that 500 passenger jets, many of them brand new, sit on
the desert in Victorville, Calif. It shows that "the airlines
have begun to delay or cancel contracts for new planes and
engines from Boeing, Airbus SAS, General Electric, United
Technologies Corp. and their vast network of suppliers."
This process is duplicated in every industry, from
telecommunications to hotels to the legal profession.
Indeed, the U.S. ruling class has just come through a
lengthy period of revolutionizing production and
communications--the scientific-technological revolution.
Greenspan and others have boasted of the great rise in
productivity, which really means the rate of surplus value, or
rate of exploitation of the workers. It is precisely the
tempestuous growth of the means of production that is putting
pressure on capitalism worldwide.
U.S. capital's problem is capitalism
itself
Unlike German imperialism in the 1930s, U.S. imperialism is
not a power restricted in its sphere of exploitation by any
imperialist rivals. On the contrary, the U.S. transnational
banks and corporations are all over the world, with production
facilities, sales outlets and financial offices.
Yet this new generation of modernized capitalist industry is
so powerfully productive that the present state of U.S.
imperialist expansion is totally insufficient to make all this
vast investment profitable. Like the German imperialists of the
1930s, the U.S. finance capitalists are feeling more and more
constrained and more and more amenable to Bush's New World
Order adventurism.
The NSS document says that one of its principal aims is "to
ignite a new era of growth through free markets and free
trade."
Washington will use "our economic engagement with other
countries" to promote "pro-growth legal and regulatory policies
to encourage business investment," "tax policies that improve
incentives for work and investment," "strong financial systems
that allow capital to be put to its most efficient use," "sound
fiscal policies to support business activity," "free trade that
provides for new avenues of growth."
The document is laced with references directed straight at
the bottom-line profit interests of the imperialist
bourgeoisie. But all this is linked to military and political
domination of the world.
The fact that it was leaked in the midst of the debate over
Iraq tends to send a message to the ruling class that a war
against Iraq is just part of a much broader plan to solve their
problems. Yes, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell-Wolfowitz group
wants to destroy the Iraqi Revolution of 1958. Yes, they want
to seize the 110 billion barrels of oil. But they know that the
overproduction crisis of a capitalist economy that produces a
$10-trillion GDP cannot be solved merely by conquering
Iraq.
Document aimed at China
In fact, the document aims straight at the People's Republic
of China, telling the leadership there to stop developing their
military and that only capitalist restoration is acceptable to
Washington. It denounces the Chinese leaders because they "have
not yet made the next series of fundamental choices about the
character of their state."
The document makes all manner of arrogant political and
social demands-thus holding out the prospect to the ruling
class here that somehow the Bush administration will bring
about "Lebensraum" in that land of 1.3 billion people. In
addition, the document alludes to further opening up India and
Russia.
This document was penned by a group rooted in the Reagan and
Bush administrations and the period of the collapse of the
USSR, the retreat of China, and setbacks for the national
liberation struggles. Their thinking has been shaped by
counter-revolution, which they regard as permanent.
The fundamental assumption of the entire document is that
the masses of the world, including the workers and the
oppressed right here at home, will remain in retreat forever.
That is what makes the entire document delusionary.
Indeed, the Bush group is trying to escape the
contradictions of capitalism through adventurism. It is a
prescription for reawakening the mass struggle and ultimately
undoing the so-called New World Order.
Goldstein is a member of the Secretariat of
Workers World Party.
Reprinted from the Oct. 3, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
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