A weakened president dismays his own class

It was not too long ago that the Bush administration seemed able to “shock and awe” any possible rivals, adversaries or opponents, internal as well as external. The president’s carefully scripted public appearances were reported with veneration and his words generated not a hint of questioning. When political commentators from within the capitalist establishment wrote of his “imperial presidency,” they did so more in a tone of admiration than alarm.

Those days are hard to remember now, when the tone has turned to mocking, even in such bastions of reaction as Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox television.

Had George W. Bush been able to pull off the global expansion his neo-con advisers were promising to their ruling class base, he would undoubtedly have morphed into a sort of god-king. But his administration has a bone in its throat that it cannot swallow nor cough up, it seems. The tenacious resistance of the Iraqi people to occupation, plus the growth of a worldwide anti-war movement, have thwarted Washington’s attempt to gain sole control—with its British junior partners—over the oil riches of the entire region, including Central Asia.

As the resistance in Iraq unfolded, the preoccupation of the Bush administration became an obsession that has deeply alarmed wide sections of the U.S. imperialist ruling class. They see their global position as “the world’s only superpower” slipping away, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars taken each year out of workers’ pockets to bankroll U.S. military supremacy.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Asia, where a summit meeting of more than a dozen countries will take place in December to inaugurate a regional commercial bloc known as the East Asian Community. The Asia experts who advise the highest echelons of the U.S. ruling class are in a near-panic over this development. For the first time since World War II, an Asian regional body is being formed without the participation of the U.S.

East Asian Community—without the U.S.

Elizabeth C. Economy is a Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR, like the Trilateral Commission and the Asia Society, was set up originally with Rockefeller money and is a corporate-funded think-tank that for 70 years has provided skilled imperialist strategists for both Republican and Democratic administrations. Here’s how she described the situation in a recent interview:

“I think that, as is the case in many other parts of the world, people in Asia feel as though President Bush and his team have been very much of a ‘one-note band,’ overwhelmingly focused on the war on terror to the exclusion of other issues that are critical to Asia. Asian leaders have gotten tired of having the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summits dominated by discussions of counter-terrorism challenges. At the same time, the White House has made some significant blunders as when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not attend the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) annual summit this past July. She was the only foreign minister not to attend, and that was considered a slap in the face to the region.”

Rice had said her schedule was too busy. Indeed, she must have been overwhelmed trying to put out the fires consuming the Bush administration.

Economy was interviewed just before Bush’s recent trip to Asia. She added that “the Asia hands within the administration are making an enormous effort in advance of this trip to get the president and the top foreign policy leadership to focus on Asia in a way that they haven’t ever done. Some of this newfound attention may also have to do with the fact that the United States is in danger of being marginalized in the region. In December, all the ASEAN countries plus Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia, and New Zealand, will gather for the inaugural summit of the East Asian Community (EAC).”

The U.S. is becoming “marginalized” in Asia, where more than half the world’s people live? And after Washington sent millions of troops to fight three bloody wars—against Japan, Korea and Vietnam —and unleashed the scourge of the atomic bomb, all so that it would become the dominant power in Asia and the Pacific? How could such a thing happen?

“I think the region was divided as to the wisdom of including the United States. The Australians and some others—the Japanese, Singaporeans and Indonesians, apparently—tried to make some room in the EAC for the United States, but one of the conditions of participation is that a member state signs the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which is a non-aggression treaty, and we’re not willing to do that,” explained Economy. (www.cfr.org)

While this reluctance of the U.S. government to sign a non-aggression treaty is an interesting admission, it is obviously only part of the story.

‘Asian economic crisis’
not forgotten

Ever since the “Asian economic crisis” of 1997, when Asian countries lost enormous wealth as their currencies came under attack from international speculators, their governments have looked for a way to free themselves from dependence on the U.S. dollar in the global market. Part of the concept of the EAC is to develop an Asia-wide currency similar to the euro in Europe.

The EAC would be a mixture of imperialist (Japan), sub-imperialist (Australia) and oppressed countries trying to overcome years of colonial underdevelopment and exploitation. Even without India, it would encompass 2 billion people. China, which wrenched itself free of imperialist domination when its socialist revolution triumphed in 1949 but has allowed capitalist investment in recent decades, is a driving force behind the EAC.

What is being envisioned is a sweeping rearrangement of the relationship between the Asian countries and the United States. Aided by China’s steady economic growth, the region has recovered from the crisis of eight years ago and is ready to discuss how to increase its economic integration.

No matter how you slice it, this would mean decreasing the economic control of U.S. imperialism in the area. The failure of Washington to agree to a non-aggression treaty may be the technicality that is keeping it out of the EAC, and that may be a blunder on the Bush administration’s part, but this “blunder” also makes the point very clearly: if things don’t go well for U.S. imperialism, it always has the might of the Pentagon at its command.

That is why Bush began his trip to Asia with a visit to President Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, who has dramatized that country’s own renewed imperial ambitions with his recurring visits to a memorial for Japanese officers killed in World War II, including those branded the very worst war criminals. This militarist posturing arouses an angry response in countries like China and Korea, where millions died at the hands of the Japanese army before 1945.

Bush and Koizumi

In a speech in Kyoto, Bush lauded Koizumi as a longtime ally with “common values, common interests, and a common commitment to freedom.” The Bush administration has no problem with imperialist war criminals.

This was Bush’s longest-ever trip abroad. It might be expected that he would make full use of it in the media, rounding up the news agencies, seeking photo-ops wherever he went, showing his administration’s global reach and command. But it passed with barely a ripple. Unlike Richard Nixon’s famous trip to China—also undertaken when his presidency was in deep trouble over Watergate—there was hardly any coverage of Bush in Beijing. And no wonder. While polite, the Chinese did not feel compelled to enter into any grand accords or make any ringing joint statements with a president who has become a pariah to most of the world.

The one concession Bush got was a limited order for Boeing commercial airliners. In other words, the Chinese treated him as a salesman. Bloomberg.com took note of it: “China’s order for 70 Boeing 737s, signed during Bush’s trip, is worth an estimated $4 billion, half the purchase it was considering. It was dwarfed the next day by a $9 billion order for Boeing from the United Arab Emirates.”

While Bush was in Japan and China, a struggle was going on in his administration back home about how to respond to calls from Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat and war-hawk, to get out of Iraq soon. At first the White House press secretary blasted Murtha. But by the time Bush arrived in China, he was conciliatory, calling Murtha “a fine man.” The administration is walking a shaky tight rope, not wanting to further antagonize the war-weary population at home while still sending a signal to Asia that it intends to beef up its military presence there.

The very conservative American Enter prise Institute, commenting on the trip, said that, “A reshaping of the U.S. defense relationship with Japan has been in the works for more than a decade. The United States will reposition its forces and base a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in a Japanese port when the non-nuclear USS Kitty Hawk is retired from active service. The United States and Japan will also work together more closely on common security concerns.”

And how will the U.S. be able to do all this if it continues to be bogged down in Iraq, and even Afghanistan? How will it be able to bolster its Japanese imperialist allies when the protests begin in Japan over basing a nuclear-powered U.S. vessel there? This is why the ruling class in the U.S. is tied up in knots over the Middle East misadventure begun by Bush and the neo-cons.

The main demonstrations against Bush came when he visited South Korea, where some 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed. Even as he was getting the usual toasts, lawmakers there passed a resolution mandating the withdrawal of a third of South Korea’s forces from Iraq.

Mongolia’s ‘success’?

Bush ended his Asia trip in Mongolia, where he said, “Mongolia has made the transition from communism to freedom, and in just 15 years, you’ve established a vibrant democracy and opened up your economy. You’re an example of success for this region and for the world.”

Bush’s remarks should be remembered alongside what he said about Iraq’s WMD’s and “mission accomplished.”

In Mongolia, most public property has been sold off to entrepreneurs and foreign investors since the counter-revolution, which accompanied the breakup of the USSR in 1991. Here’s what the government of Mongolia itself, in a Human Development Report it prepared for the UN just two years ago, had to say about conditions there since the “transition” from a socialist to a capitalist economy.

“Both the depth and severity of poverty have increased in recent years, as has the inequality in income distribution. Close to 35.6 percent of the population was below the income poverty line in 1998 ...

“Women in Mongolia, unlike in many other countries, do not face a serious problem of gender discrimination. Progress for women has been quite positive in the past under the socialist regime as well as in recent years. However, not all developments and outcomes have been favorable to women. In 1998, the proportion of poor women (44 percent) was more than double the proportion of poor men (21 percent). Women’s share of parliamentary representation has fallen from 23 percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2000. ...

“Many of the disparities which are apparent today were kept at bay by a socialist system that limited migration and set up rural institutions to facilitate regional development. However, with the uneven expansion of employment opportunities, following the economic transition, disparities began to develop, and these are now reflected in the data for health, education and earnings. ...

“The birth rate declined by nearly 52 percent in 10 years as Mongolians decided to have fewer children, or have them less frequently in order to avoid becoming more economically vulnerable.”

Clearly, the only freedom the U.S. ruling class promotes is the freedom of the transnational corporations to extract profits at the expense of the people everywhere.