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Principles of a new world order
Sat May 31 16:57:31 2003
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Guest Opinion | Principles of a new world order

By Graduate Students Against the War - gsaw@ucdavis.edu
http://www.californiaaggie.com/_articles/6863.taf

May 27, 2003 - After the fall of the Berlin Wall, President George H.W. Bush ushered in the post-Soviet era by calling it a “New World Order.” The former president Bush followed up his statement by invading Panama and then going to war against Iraq in the first Persian Gulf War.

Like his father, President George W. Bush is aggressively pursuing this New World Order. He has prosecuted unilateralism to the fullest, aggressively trumpeting violence in foreign affairs. In just over two years in office, President Bush has attempted to overthrow the democratically elected Venezuelan government, escalated the Andean guerilla war via “Plan Colombia,” engendered a war in Afghanistan, disregarded the will of the U.N. Security Council and violating the organization’s charter and invaded Iraq a second time, finishing off Saddam Hussein. Yet, these worldwide interventions are not misguided blunders, but rather a rational policy aimed at global military domination.

Even before Bush’s election, a Washington neoconservative think tank, the Project for the New American Century, laid out the nature of this omnipotent American Empire. Headed by conservative strategists William Kristol and Gary Schmitt, PNAC is a central actor now defining the Bush Administration’s foreign policy. Senior members of the Bush Administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Department strategist Paul Wolfowitz and State Department Undersecretary Elliott Abrams, have signed on to PNAC’s Statement of Principles.

By advocating an invincible military as well as a bold and aggressive foreign policy, PNAC aims to duplicate the successes of Reagan’s bellicose Presidency. However, PNAC seeks to go beyond that in the current Administration, calling for a state of permanent global intervention. Neo-conservatives insist that the United States must have the will to create an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles. PNAC is arguing for a permanent state of war, in which the United States will be in perpetual conflict with all who seek to oppose American domination.

In order to achieve global military dominance, PNAC projects remaking the American military machine. In its paper “Remaking America’s Defenses,” the neo-conservative planners call for a “transformation” of the American military. PNAC advises a “revolution in military affairs” through the application of advanced technology and reorganization of the military. This includes missile defense, control of space and cyberspace, and a hybridization of robotic and conventional forces. PNAC envisions America to be the hegemonic military power on land, in the sea, over the air, and in outer space. This, of course, is precisely Donald Rumsfeld’s program as defense secretary. And to what end? A new technological military supremacy will secure vital resources and ensure political submission throughout the empire.

As ominous as this radical expansion of military control is, the domestic governmental change that PNAC advocates and that the Bush administration has begun to implement is just as frightening. Essentially, PNAC thinkers desire military control over the American polity. PNAC planners understand that America’s voters “will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions.” Attaining absolute political power, then, will enable neo-conservatives to institutionalize their policy goals within the federal bureaucracy. As the new Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the ongoing infringement of civil liberties and the growing climate of fear demonstrate, some of these goals have already been met.

PNAC planners realized several years ago that the American public must live in fear in order for such imperialistic plans to be accepted as reasonable. Writing a year and a half before Sept. 11, 2001, the PNAC noted that the process of bringing about this public state of fear would likely take a considerable length of time, “absent some catastrophic and cataclysmic event — like a new Pearl Harbor.” In other words, a Pearl Harbor-type event offered the possibility of accelerating the American public’s willingness to accept the project of world domination (and the stifling of domestic dissent) as its own.

Bush saw Sept. 11, then, precisely as an “opportunity” — Condoleeza Rice’s word in a policy briefing the next day — to galvanize the American public into quickly accepting belligerent policies as necessary for America’s defense. Bush has fought his wars against Afghanistan and Iraq and has undermined Constitutional rights all in the name of the “war on terror.”

But before Sept. 11 and before the war on terror, the PNAC was already advocating just the policies that Bush is pursuing today. PNAC prescribes violence because it has no alternative. The Bush Administration will lose the upcoming election if domestic concerns are not deflected by military exploits abroad. A widening recession, rising unemployment, record level budget cuts, massive transfers of wealth to the wealthy and corporate scandals all require that Americans must turn their attention elsewhere. Consequently, neo-conservatives must rely on strong shows of force to retain their power.

Yet, relying on force alone is inherently weak. As James Baldwin, writing 30 years ago, eloquently put it, “When power translates itself into tyranny, it means that the principles on which that power depended, and which were its justification, are bankrupt. When this happens, and it is happening now, power can only be defended by thugs and mediocrities — and seas of blood.”

It is up to all of us to resist this specter of tyranny and its concomitant bloodshed as our only hope for a better and more peaceful planet.

GRADUATE STUDENTS AGAINST the WAR can be reached at gsaw@ucdavis.edu . Information about campus antiwar activities can be accessed at http://www.ucdavispeace.org  .
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DESTROY_THE_NEW_WORLD_ORDER.zip
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=40854