Meeting in the shadow of China
smp - Friday, November 26, 2004
MICHAEL RICHARDSON
Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia will have an opportunity early next week to re-invigorate relations when their leaders meet at the Asean summit in Vientiane, Laos. As with so much of Asia-Pacific diplomacy these days, China's rise is one of the factors behind Southeast Asia's interest in strengthening ties with its southern neighbours.
Association of Southeast Asian Nations members want the involvement of Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) in regional trade, investment and diplomacy, seeing it as part of a balance of interests that promotes constructive engagement by external powers such as China, the US, Japan, India, the European Union and Russia.
Until late last year, a Malaysian veto wielded by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad effectively excluded Australia from further participation in Asean-led regionalism. Indonesia's anger at the support of Australia and New Zealand in East Timor's independence decision in 1999 also undermined engagement. But time and new leaders in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta have helped reopen the door for improving Asean and ANZ ties.
One way forward is agreeing to launch negotiations for an ANZ-Southeast Asia free-trade zone. ANZ trade ministers and their Asean counterparts have recommended to their heads of government - who will meet at the Asean summit - that the talks through an Asean, ANZ free-trade agreement (AANZ FTA), should start early next year. The objective should be to make any deal as comprehensive as possible so it will stimulate trade, growth and economic integration within and between ANZ and Southeast Asia. The declared aim of this proposed new round of regional opening is to double Asean-ANZ trade and investment by 2010. Two-way trade in goods and services was worth more than US$34.5 billion last year, while cumulative two-way investment was more than US$8.4 billion. Southeast Asia sells more to ANZ than it buys and thus has a hefty trade surplus. But Southeast Asia invests much more in ANZ than vice versa.
An Asean-ANZ free trade zone would be an influential force in Asia-Pacific affairs. Asean had a combined population of more than 500 million and an estimated US$682 billion in gross domestic product last year. ANZ had a combined population of 24 million and an estimated GDP of $US587 billion last year. The GDP of Asean plus ANZ is US$1.27 trillion not far short of China's estimated GDP last year of US$1.43 trillion.
A successful AANZ FTA would ensure that Australia and New Zealand are connected with the emerging economic architecture in Asia as other regional arrangements evolve. It would be good economics and good geo-politics. Trade between ANZ and Southeast Asia is mostly complementary rather than competitive, with potential for growth.
A deal that liberalised and integrated the two regions' economies would strengthen the international bargaining position of both as they negotiate trade deals with other countries or groupings, including China. It would also send a positive signal to investors that ANZ and Asean are committed to continuing liberalisation.
However, there is growing realisation on both sides that wider interests and opportunities can be pursued in Asia. Indeed, in trade and investment Northeast Asia is relatively more important for ANZ than Southeast Asia, and has been for many years. Likewise, China and India beckon for Southeast Asia. But Australia and New Zealand also are seeking their own free-trade deals with China, and perhaps in future with India, just as Asean has done with China and India.
Indeed, China has indicated that as a power with global interests, it wants Australia and New Zealand, along with India, to be part of any future Asian economic community.
Michael Richardson is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. This is a personal comment.
MICHAEL RICHARDSON
Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia will have an opportunity early next week to re-invigorate relations when their leaders meet at the Asean summit in Vientiane, Laos. As with so much of Asia-Pacific diplomacy these days, China's rise is one of the factors behind Southeast Asia's interest in strengthening ties with its southern neighbours.
Association of Southeast Asian Nations members want the involvement of Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) in regional trade, investment and diplomacy, seeing it as part of a balance of interests that promotes constructive engagement by external powers such as China, the US, Japan, India, the European Union and Russia.
Until late last year, a Malaysian veto wielded by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad effectively excluded Australia from further participation in Asean-led regionalism. Indonesia's anger at the support of Australia and New Zealand in East Timor's independence decision in 1999 also undermined engagement. But time and new leaders in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta have helped reopen the door for improving Asean and ANZ ties.
One way forward is agreeing to launch negotiations for an ANZ-Southeast Asia free-trade zone. ANZ trade ministers and their Asean counterparts have recommended to their heads of government - who will meet at the Asean summit - that the talks through an Asean, ANZ free-trade agreement (AANZ FTA), should start early next year. The objective should be to make any deal as comprehensive as possible so it will stimulate trade, growth and economic integration within and between ANZ and Southeast Asia. The declared aim of this proposed new round of regional opening is to double Asean-ANZ trade and investment by 2010. Two-way trade in goods and services was worth more than US$34.5 billion last year, while cumulative two-way investment was more than US$8.4 billion. Southeast Asia sells more to ANZ than it buys and thus has a hefty trade surplus. But Southeast Asia invests much more in ANZ than vice versa.
An Asean-ANZ free trade zone would be an influential force in Asia-Pacific affairs. Asean had a combined population of more than 500 million and an estimated US$682 billion in gross domestic product last year. ANZ had a combined population of 24 million and an estimated GDP of $US587 billion last year. The GDP of Asean plus ANZ is US$1.27 trillion not far short of China's estimated GDP last year of US$1.43 trillion.
A successful AANZ FTA would ensure that Australia and New Zealand are connected with the emerging economic architecture in Asia as other regional arrangements evolve. It would be good economics and good geo-politics. Trade between ANZ and Southeast Asia is mostly complementary rather than competitive, with potential for growth.
A deal that liberalised and integrated the two regions' economies would strengthen the international bargaining position of both as they negotiate trade deals with other countries or groupings, including China. It would also send a positive signal to investors that ANZ and Asean are committed to continuing liberalisation.
However, there is growing realisation on both sides that wider interests and opportunities can be pursued in Asia. Indeed, in trade and investment Northeast Asia is relatively more important for ANZ than Southeast Asia, and has been for many years. Likewise, China and India beckon for Southeast Asia. But Australia and New Zealand also are seeking their own free-trade deals with China, and perhaps in future with India, just as Asean has done with China and India.
Indeed, China has indicated that as a power with global interests, it wants Australia and New Zealand, along with India, to be part of any future Asian economic community.
Michael Richardson is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. This is a personal comment.
Dead on arrival in Hong Kong?
scmp - Friday, November 26, 2004
MIKE MOORE
Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, host of last week's annual conference of 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Co-Operation members in Santiago, Chile, was a minister in former president Salvador Alliende's government that was brutally overthrown by the military with CIA approval.
How the world has changed in 30 years, mostly for the good.
Apec, formed 15 years ago, is an important concept. It was the first forum where the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan sat at a table together - a major breakthrough then.
In Bogor, Indonesia, leaders in 1994 agreed to achieve free and open trade and investment, developed countries were to meet a 2010 deadline, and developing countries 2020, targets which will not be met.
It is good that leaders and ministers called for a conclusion to the Doha Development trade round. Again. Good stuff which we hear every year, let's hope negotiators in Geneva get the message. Yet, while Apec leaders called for a multilateral result for trade liberalisation, they quickly dispersed into mini-meetings and emerged to joint press conferences about bilateral free-trade deals. It's great media, good television opportunities and front-page stories that reflect well on ministers. All roads lead to China which is now discussing free-trade deals with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Chile, New Zealand, Australia and others. Ministers like to sign things, it's costly to be left out.
So what's wrong with all this? It's OK if you are in, but it does create trade diversion, it's a poor substitute for a WTO deal, and some have agreed to hundreds of product exemptions. A web of protectionist discriminatory deals gives politicians levers they cannot refuse to use and has the potential to divert energy and focus from the bigger World Trade Organisation deal. Some argue that this will force action at the WTO in Geneva, a tactic of competitive liberalisation. It would be like booing at the Special Olympics.
A recent World Bank report on the result of regional trade agreements shows that they have exploded by 400 per cent since 1990 to about 230. It concludes that the poorest, most capacity-restrained countries lose the most. The report also suggests that US and European Union pressure to sign up poorer nations to embrace strict intellectual property rights and abolish capital controls may not meet their economic needs.
The bank agrees that there are great gains for developing countries when they liberalise their service industries, but more benefits are possible by opening their markets to worldwide competition, not just through narrow agreements. The big players have more muscle in bilateral deals and trade has not increased for some small players.
Big players being more generous on agriculture is the best way of moving towards the WTO system. Some of the most protectionist agriculture nations were at Apec, and refused to budge. Modest progress has occurred at the WTO but ambitions are now so low that at the next trade ministers' meeting in Hong Kong, officials will congratulate themselves on a minimum outcome, which is like winning a bronze medal for jumping over a matchbox.
It is important to maintain momentum however slight, even if the round concludes next year.
Another issue WTO members must decide on is the next director-general. Even if you win on all criteria - the WTO being a consensus-driven grouping - the loser can veto the winner. I ensured my successor had an office and access to paper three months before I left to maintain the process. It would be dangerous to the modest ambitions at the next ministerial meeting if the selection process dragged on. It is possible, but hopefully it will not happen.
Mike Moore is a former prime minister of New Zealand and former director-general of the World Trade Organisation.
MIKE MOORE
Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, host of last week's annual conference of 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Co-Operation members in Santiago, Chile, was a minister in former president Salvador Alliende's government that was brutally overthrown by the military with CIA approval.
How the world has changed in 30 years, mostly for the good.
Apec, formed 15 years ago, is an important concept. It was the first forum where the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan sat at a table together - a major breakthrough then.
In Bogor, Indonesia, leaders in 1994 agreed to achieve free and open trade and investment, developed countries were to meet a 2010 deadline, and developing countries 2020, targets which will not be met.
It is good that leaders and ministers called for a conclusion to the Doha Development trade round. Again. Good stuff which we hear every year, let's hope negotiators in Geneva get the message. Yet, while Apec leaders called for a multilateral result for trade liberalisation, they quickly dispersed into mini-meetings and emerged to joint press conferences about bilateral free-trade deals. It's great media, good television opportunities and front-page stories that reflect well on ministers. All roads lead to China which is now discussing free-trade deals with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Chile, New Zealand, Australia and others. Ministers like to sign things, it's costly to be left out.
So what's wrong with all this? It's OK if you are in, but it does create trade diversion, it's a poor substitute for a WTO deal, and some have agreed to hundreds of product exemptions. A web of protectionist discriminatory deals gives politicians levers they cannot refuse to use and has the potential to divert energy and focus from the bigger World Trade Organisation deal. Some argue that this will force action at the WTO in Geneva, a tactic of competitive liberalisation. It would be like booing at the Special Olympics.
A recent World Bank report on the result of regional trade agreements shows that they have exploded by 400 per cent since 1990 to about 230. It concludes that the poorest, most capacity-restrained countries lose the most. The report also suggests that US and European Union pressure to sign up poorer nations to embrace strict intellectual property rights and abolish capital controls may not meet their economic needs.
The bank agrees that there are great gains for developing countries when they liberalise their service industries, but more benefits are possible by opening their markets to worldwide competition, not just through narrow agreements. The big players have more muscle in bilateral deals and trade has not increased for some small players.
Big players being more generous on agriculture is the best way of moving towards the WTO system. Some of the most protectionist agriculture nations were at Apec, and refused to budge. Modest progress has occurred at the WTO but ambitions are now so low that at the next trade ministers' meeting in Hong Kong, officials will congratulate themselves on a minimum outcome, which is like winning a bronze medal for jumping over a matchbox.
It is important to maintain momentum however slight, even if the round concludes next year.
Another issue WTO members must decide on is the next director-general. Even if you win on all criteria - the WTO being a consensus-driven grouping - the loser can veto the winner. I ensured my successor had an office and access to paper three months before I left to maintain the process. It would be dangerous to the modest ambitions at the next ministerial meeting if the selection process dragged on. It is possible, but hopefully it will not happen.
Mike Moore is a former prime minister of New Zealand and former director-general of the World Trade Organisation.
End of the Bush doctrine
Friday, November 5, 2004
IAN BREMMER
IAN BREMMER
The world has closely watched the US presidential election to see what the outcome might mean for the next four years of American foreign policy. Much has been written about how a win for President George W. Bush would simply produce more of what some call the "Bush doctrine". But the second Bush administration will produce a foreign policy based on a substantively different set of premises than those seen over the last four years.
The first Bush administration created a foreign policy born out of the clash between two sets of policymakers - the neoconservatives and the multilateralists. Neither group can claim a greater influence. If the neoconservatives have held sway over the US policies on Israel and the Palestinians, "New Europe" and Iraq, the multilateralists have clearly been more influential in regard to China and Taiwan, India and Pakistan, and North Korea.
The neoconservatives, like Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, have sought at every turn to maximise Washington's freedom to act alone internationally, refusing to accept any constraints imposed by enemies, allies and international institutions. Multilateralists, like Secretary of State Colin Powell, have argued that winning the war on terror requires the endorsement of international institutions and the construction of "coalitions of the willing" to co-ordinate an effective global response.
With Mr Bush's re-election, both neoconservatives and multilateralists are now likely to find themselves with significantly less influence. There are two important reasons: both groups have seen their policies discredited - neoconservatives in Iraq and multilateralists in North Korea and Iran - and neither group represents traditional Republican ideas about foreign policy. With Mr Bush's re-election, we are likely to see a return of traditional Republicans, of foreign policymakers more in harmony with conventional Republican ideas about America's role in the world. Traditional Republican foreign policy concerns itself with the defence of American power and interests, and views the promotion of democracy abroad as an often prohibitively expensive luxury. It is founded on the principle that costs and benefits must be carefully weighed before taking action.
The aim of its policies is to produce maximum national security benefit at minimum cost. And while traditional Republicans believe that the strategic advantages of freedom of manoeuvre outweigh the political cost of unilateral action, they insist that burdens and responsibilities abroad should be shared wherever possible. Traditional Republican foreign policy is decidedly not "revolutionary" and disdains moralistic ideology in favour of the maintenance of power necessary to protect vital national interests. It means that we are likely to hear more about regime change in North Korea, Iran and even Saudi Arabia, but we are unlikely to actually see one. It means the US will pull as many troops as possible from Iraq at the earliest reasonable date following Iraqi elections. It also means that the US will continue to play the role of world policeman, but without the ideological context of a "world order" to give it strategic coherence.
Neoconservatives and multilateralists have together produced a foreign policy that has committed American leadership to strategies the White House now recognises are unsustainable. Because Mr Bush is a man who learns from his mistakes - whether he publicly admits them or not - we will see a new approach to foreign policy. It will be an approach more familiar to those who followed his father's administration and to those other, more traditional, practitioners of Republican foreign policy.
Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, a financial research and consulting firm that focuses on political-risk analysis, and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York.
Divide-and-rule diplomacy
scmp - Friday, November 5, 2004
RICHARD HALLORAN
RICHARD HALLORAN
One stark fact stands out despite the solid victory of President George W. Bush: America is as divided as it has not been since the turbulent Vietnam era 40 years ago. That split will affect most decisions in domestic politics and foreign policy, including that towards Asia, for the next four years.
The division was especially vivid in the coloured charts that the television networks displayed to portray the cumulative results of the close election: The northeast and the west coast were Democratic blue, while the heartland in middle America was almost completely Republican red.
Deep down in America today is a cultural canyon between the religious right and the secular left. A nearly unanimous conclusion drawn by political pundits once the results were known was that this election had been decided more on values than anything else, including economic issues.
On one side are the conservatives who cherish the traditional values of family, marriage, church, individual responsibility, the sanctity of life, and national security. On the other side are liberals who advocate abortion rights, homosexual marriage, a strong government social and economic role, and international relations based on alliances and the United Nations.
In addition is a widening political split. The Democratic coalition assembled by president Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Great Depression years of the 1930s is crumbling as its leaders pass from the scene. In contrast, the Republican coalition forged by president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s has taken hold across the land.
Another divisive point: the campaign which has just concluded was the nastiest, least civil in the last 50 years. The mud-slinging, name-calling, false advertising and scandal mongering on both sides and at every level from the presidential races down to local legislative contests are not likely to be forgotten even after gracious speeches urging support for common causes.
US policy in Asia did not figure in the election campaign outside debate on how to cope with North Korea's aspirations to acquire nuclear arms.
That does not mean that Mr Bush will have a free hand as he begins his second term; John Kerry retains his seat in Congress, giving him a platform from which to lead criticism and opposition to the president. (Vice-presidential candidate John Edwards did not run for re-election to the Senate).
If Mr Bush so chooses, he will have a venue from which to launch his second term's Asia policy when he attends the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Chile later this month. Surely, the 21 Asian leaders gathered there will be looking for an exposition of his ideas for the next four years.
At the top of Mr Bush's agenda should be his vision for relations with China, the emerging political, economic, and military power of Asia. In his first term, the president vacillated on the central issue between Washington and Beijing: the fate of Taiwan. At first, Mr Bush was firm in asserting that the US would stand by Taiwan, then shifted to what Beijing saw as a pro-Chinese stance.
More recently, Secretary of State Colin Powell, during a trip to Japan, China and South Korea, appeared to support the mainland government's claims to Taiwan, in contrast to his earlier praise for Taiwan's democracy and support for its self-determination.
Mr Bush is a politician who rewards his friends and rebukes those he considers to be critics. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi can expect a warm reception. Leaders of those nations that openly expressed a preference for Senator Kerry in the election, like South Korea in Asia and France in Europe, may find the temperature chilly.
Richard Halloran is a former New York Times foreign correspondent in Asia and military correspondent in Washington.
The Republican Right's Challenge to the Global Anti-War Movement
By Walden Bello*
There continues to be credible allegations of fraud, particularly in the vote count in the state of Ohio, but most of the United States, including the Democratic Party, has recognized that George W. Bush has been reelected to the presidency with a 3.5 million margin of victory over John Kerry.
Hegemonic Bloc?
The terrible truth, however, is that the Republican victory, while not lopsided, was solid. Another phase of the political revolution begun by Ronald Reagan in 1980, the 2004 elections confirmed that the center of gravity of US politics lies not on the center-right but on the extreme right. Now, it remains true that the country is divided almost evenly, and bitterly so. But it is the Republican Right that has managed to provide a compelling vision for its base and to fashion and implement a strategy to win power at all levels of the electoral arena, in civil society, and in the media. While liberals and progressives have floundered, the Radical Right has united under an utterly simple vision the different components of its base: the South and Southwest, the majority of white males, the upper and middle classes that have benefited from the neoliberal economic revolution, Corporate America, and Christian fundamentalists. This vision is essentially a subliminal one, and it is that of a country weakened from within by an alliance of pro-big government liberals, promiscuous gays and lesbians, and illegal immigrants, and besieged from without by hateful Third World hordes and effete Europeans jealous of America¹s prosperity and power. There are, indeed, two Americas, but one is confused and disorganized while the other exudes a confidence and arrogance that only superior strategy and organization can bestow. The Radical Right has managed, with its vision of a return to an imagined community a pristine white Christian small-town America circa 1950--to construct what the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci called a "hegemonic bloc". And this bloc is poised to continue its reign for the next 25 years.
The future of democracy, economic rights, individual rights, and minority rights seems bleak in the US, but it is perhaps only through a second shock therapy‹the first being Reagan's victory in 1980 that progressive America will finally confront what it will take to turn the tide: an all-sided battle for ideological and organizational hegemony in which it must expect no quarter and it must give none, where it can no longer afford to make mistakes.
Crisis of the Empire
But while America marches rightward, it fails to drag the rest of the world along with it. Indeed, most of the rest of the world is headed in the opposite direction. Nothing illustrated this more than the fact that in the very week Bush was reelected, a coalition of left parties came to power in Uruguay, Hugo Chavez, Washington's new nemesis in Latin America, swept state elections in Venezuela, and Hungary served notice it was withdrawing its 300 troops from Iraq. Although the American Right is consolidating its hold domestically, it cannot halt the unraveling of Washington's hegemony globally.
The principal cause of what we have called the crisis of overextension, or the mismatch between goals and resources owing to imperial ambition, is the massive miscalculation of invading Iraq. This crisis is likely to continue, if not accelerate, in Bush's second term. The key manifestations of the imperial dilemma stand out starkly:
Iraq, of course, is the main source of the empire's unraveling. The Iraqi people¹s resistance has not only frustrated a US colonial takeover of their country. Equally important, it has shown a new generation of anti-imperialists all over the world for whom Vietnam is ancient history that it is possible to fight the empire to a stalemate and eventually to victory.
It is unlikely, however, that the Bush administration will acknowledge the handwriting on the wall any time soon. It will assault the city of Fallujah with the desperate illusion that this will destroy the operational center of the insurgency. Fallujah, however, is not an operational center but a symbolic center that has already played its role, and its 'fall' is not going to stop the spread and deepening of a decentralized resistance movement throughout Iraq. Moreover, the Fallujah insurgents are likely to retreat after giving battle, trading, as in Samara, a conventional defense of a city for a guerrilla presence that harasses and pins down the US army and its Iraqi mercenaries.
With 55 cities and towns already classified as no-go zones for US troops, the Bush administration will soon realize that retaking and occupying urban centers en masse simply will not work. There are some 130,000 US troops in Iraq today. Simply to fight the guerrillas to a stalemate, one would need at least 500,000 troops for the level of resistance that one finds in Iraq today. That will not be possible unless Bush brings back the draft, and this will surely produce the civil disorder that would threaten the current Republican hegemony.
Washington's alternative will be to withdraw to and dig in behind superfortified bases and sally forth periodically to show the flag. While this would mean de facto defeat for the US, it will also mean that the Iraqi people's resistance will not have de jure territorial control from which to declare sovereignty and begin the process of coming up with a truly national government.
Challenges to the Movement
Supporting the Iraqi people's struggle to create the sovereign space to create a national government of their choice continues to be one of the two overriding priorities of the global anti-war movement. The other is ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine and trampling of the Palestinian people's rights. At a moment marked by the conjunction of a resurgent Right in the US and a continuing crisis of empire globally, what will it take to advance this goal?
First of all, the movement has to graduate beyond spontaneity and arrive at a new level of transborder coordination, one that goes beyond synchronizing annual days of protest against the war. The critical mass to affect the outcome of the war will not be attained without a rolling wave of global protests similar to that which marked the anti-Vietnam war mobilizations from 1968 to 1972--one that puts millions of people in a constant state of activism. Coordination, moreover, will mean coordinating not only mass demonstrations but also civil disobedience, work on the global media, day-to-day lobbying of officials, and political education. More effective coordination and, yes, professionalization of the anti-war work must not, however, be achieved at the expense of the participatory processes that are the trademark of our movement.
Second, in terms of tactics, new forms of protests must be engaged in. Sanctions and boycotts are methods that must be brought into play. At the Mumbai WSF earlier this year, Arundhati Roy suggested starting with one or two US firms benefiting directly from the war such as Halliburton and Bechtel and mobilizing to close down their operations worldwide. It is time to take her suggestion seriously, not only with respect to US firms but also with Israeli firms and products. Moreover, the level of militance must be raised, with more and more civil disobedience and non-violent disruptions of business as usual encouraged. We must tell Washington and its allies that there can be no business as usual so long as the war continues. The kind of debate taking place in Britain, whether to push peaceful demonstrations or civil disobedience, is fruitless, since both are essential and must be combined in an innovative and effective ways..
In the US, activists can draw on the immensely powerful tradition of disobedience to unjust law that motivated people such as the abolitionists, Henry David Thoreau, the Quakers, and the Berrigan Brothers. Indeed, this kind of resistance might be the key in stopping not only the imperial drive but also the rush to restrict political liberties and democracy. At no other time than today, when the electoral option is gone, is it more necessary to resist the imperial writ nonviolently by invoking a higher law.
Third, it is clear that Great Britain and Italy‹Britain especially are the principal supports of Bush's war policy outside the United States. Bush constantly resorts to invoking these governments to legitimize the US adventure. What happens in Italy, in turn, affects what happens in Britain. Both countries have solid anti-war majorities that must now be converted into a powerful force to disrupt business as usual in these countries ruled by governments complicit in the American war. Both countries have the hallowed tradition of the general strike that, combined with massive civil disobedience, can significantly raise the costs to their government of their support for Washington. When asked why the demonstrations of March 20, 2004 drew significantly fewer people than those of February 2003, many activists in Britain and Italy respond: because people felt their actions were not able to prevent the US from going to war anyway. That sort of defeatism and demoralization can only be countered not by lowering the demands on people but by upping them, by asking them to put their bodies on the line through acts of nonviolent civil resistance.
Fourth, with the Middle East being the strategic battleground of the next few decades, it will be essential to forge links between the global peace movement and the Arab world. The governments of the Middle East are notoriously supine when it comes to the US, so that, as in Europe, it is forging the ties of solidarity among civil movements that must be main thrust of this effort. This will actually be a courageous and controversial step since some of the strongest anti-US movements in the Middle East have been labeled "terrorist" or "terrorist sympathizers" by the US and some European governments. What is important is not to let US-imposed definitions stand in the way of people reaching out to one another to see if there is a basis for working together. Likewise, it is critical for the Palestinian movement and the Israeli anti-Zionist and peace movements to get beyond the labels imposed by governments and find ways of cooperating to end the Israeli occupation. Process has a way of bringing people together from seemingly non-reconcilable political positions. In this regard, the Beirut Anti-War Assembly that took place in mid-September 2004, with strong representation from the global peace movement and social movements from all over the Arab world, was a significant step in this direction.
As it enters its second term, the Bush agenda remains the same: global domination. Our response is the same: global resistance. There is only one thing that can frustrate the empire's dark aims in Iraq, Palestine, and elsewhere: militant solidarity among world's peoples. Making that solidarity real and powerful and ultimately triumphant is the challenge before us.
*Executive Director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South and Professor of Sociology and Public Administration at the University of the Philippines.
There continues to be credible allegations of fraud, particularly in the vote count in the state of Ohio, but most of the United States, including the Democratic Party, has recognized that George W. Bush has been reelected to the presidency with a 3.5 million margin of victory over John Kerry.
Hegemonic Bloc?
The terrible truth, however, is that the Republican victory, while not lopsided, was solid. Another phase of the political revolution begun by Ronald Reagan in 1980, the 2004 elections confirmed that the center of gravity of US politics lies not on the center-right but on the extreme right. Now, it remains true that the country is divided almost evenly, and bitterly so. But it is the Republican Right that has managed to provide a compelling vision for its base and to fashion and implement a strategy to win power at all levels of the electoral arena, in civil society, and in the media. While liberals and progressives have floundered, the Radical Right has united under an utterly simple vision the different components of its base: the South and Southwest, the majority of white males, the upper and middle classes that have benefited from the neoliberal economic revolution, Corporate America, and Christian fundamentalists. This vision is essentially a subliminal one, and it is that of a country weakened from within by an alliance of pro-big government liberals, promiscuous gays and lesbians, and illegal immigrants, and besieged from without by hateful Third World hordes and effete Europeans jealous of America¹s prosperity and power. There are, indeed, two Americas, but one is confused and disorganized while the other exudes a confidence and arrogance that only superior strategy and organization can bestow. The Radical Right has managed, with its vision of a return to an imagined community a pristine white Christian small-town America circa 1950--to construct what the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci called a "hegemonic bloc". And this bloc is poised to continue its reign for the next 25 years.
The future of democracy, economic rights, individual rights, and minority rights seems bleak in the US, but it is perhaps only through a second shock therapy‹the first being Reagan's victory in 1980 that progressive America will finally confront what it will take to turn the tide: an all-sided battle for ideological and organizational hegemony in which it must expect no quarter and it must give none, where it can no longer afford to make mistakes.
Crisis of the Empire
But while America marches rightward, it fails to drag the rest of the world along with it. Indeed, most of the rest of the world is headed in the opposite direction. Nothing illustrated this more than the fact that in the very week Bush was reelected, a coalition of left parties came to power in Uruguay, Hugo Chavez, Washington's new nemesis in Latin America, swept state elections in Venezuela, and Hungary served notice it was withdrawing its 300 troops from Iraq. Although the American Right is consolidating its hold domestically, it cannot halt the unraveling of Washington's hegemony globally.
The principal cause of what we have called the crisis of overextension, or the mismatch between goals and resources owing to imperial ambition, is the massive miscalculation of invading Iraq. This crisis is likely to continue, if not accelerate, in Bush's second term. The key manifestations of the imperial dilemma stand out starkly:
- Despite the recent US-sponsored elections in Afghanistan, the Karzai government effectively controls only parts of Kabul and two or three other cities. As UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said, despite the elections, "without functional state institutions able to serve the basic needs of the population throughout the country, the authority and legitimacy of the new government will be short-lived." And so long as this is the case, Afghanistan will tie down 13,500 US troops within the country and 35,000 support personnel outside.
- The US war on terror has backfired completely, with Al Qaeda and its allies much stronger today than in 2001. In this regard, Osama bin Laden's pre-election video was worth a thousand words. The invasion of Iraq, according to Richard Clarke, Bush's former anti-terrorism czar, claims, derailed the war on terror and served as the best recruiting device for Al Qaeda. But even without Iraq, Washington's heavy handed police and military methods of dealing with terrorism were already alienating millions of Muslims. Nothing illustrates this more than Southern Thailand, where US anti-terrorist advice has helped convert discontent into an insurgency.
- With its full embrace of Ariel Sharon¹s no-win strategy of sabotaging the emergence of a Palestinian state, Washington has forfeited all the political capital that it had gained among Arabs by brokering the now defunct Oslo Accord. Moreover, the go-with-Sharon strategy, along with the occupation of Iraq, has left Washington¹s allies among the Arab elites exposed, discredited, and vulnerable.
- The Atlantic Alliance is dead, and in the coming period, trade conflicts will combine with political differences to push the US and Europe even further apart. Europe is key to the sustainability of the American empire. As the neoconservative writer Robert Kagan notes, ³"Americans will need the legitimacy that Europe can provide, but Europeans may well fail to grant it".
- Latin America's move to the left will accelerate. The victory of the leftist coalition in Uruguay is simply the latest in a series of electoral victories for progressive forces, following those in Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, and Brazil. Along with electoral turns to the left, there may also be in the offing more mass insurrections such as that which occurred in Bolivia in October 2003. Speaking of the turn towards the left and away from the empire, one of the US' friends, former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda, assesses the situation accurately: "America's friends are feeling the fire of this anti-American wrath. They are finding themselves forced to shift their own rhetoric and attitude in order to dampen their defense of policies viewed as pro-American or US-inspired, and to stiffen their resistance to Washington's demands and desires".
Iraq, of course, is the main source of the empire's unraveling. The Iraqi people¹s resistance has not only frustrated a US colonial takeover of their country. Equally important, it has shown a new generation of anti-imperialists all over the world for whom Vietnam is ancient history that it is possible to fight the empire to a stalemate and eventually to victory.
It is unlikely, however, that the Bush administration will acknowledge the handwriting on the wall any time soon. It will assault the city of Fallujah with the desperate illusion that this will destroy the operational center of the insurgency. Fallujah, however, is not an operational center but a symbolic center that has already played its role, and its 'fall' is not going to stop the spread and deepening of a decentralized resistance movement throughout Iraq. Moreover, the Fallujah insurgents are likely to retreat after giving battle, trading, as in Samara, a conventional defense of a city for a guerrilla presence that harasses and pins down the US army and its Iraqi mercenaries.
With 55 cities and towns already classified as no-go zones for US troops, the Bush administration will soon realize that retaking and occupying urban centers en masse simply will not work. There are some 130,000 US troops in Iraq today. Simply to fight the guerrillas to a stalemate, one would need at least 500,000 troops for the level of resistance that one finds in Iraq today. That will not be possible unless Bush brings back the draft, and this will surely produce the civil disorder that would threaten the current Republican hegemony.
Washington's alternative will be to withdraw to and dig in behind superfortified bases and sally forth periodically to show the flag. While this would mean de facto defeat for the US, it will also mean that the Iraqi people's resistance will not have de jure territorial control from which to declare sovereignty and begin the process of coming up with a truly national government.
Challenges to the Movement
Supporting the Iraqi people's struggle to create the sovereign space to create a national government of their choice continues to be one of the two overriding priorities of the global anti-war movement. The other is ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine and trampling of the Palestinian people's rights. At a moment marked by the conjunction of a resurgent Right in the US and a continuing crisis of empire globally, what will it take to advance this goal?
First of all, the movement has to graduate beyond spontaneity and arrive at a new level of transborder coordination, one that goes beyond synchronizing annual days of protest against the war. The critical mass to affect the outcome of the war will not be attained without a rolling wave of global protests similar to that which marked the anti-Vietnam war mobilizations from 1968 to 1972--one that puts millions of people in a constant state of activism. Coordination, moreover, will mean coordinating not only mass demonstrations but also civil disobedience, work on the global media, day-to-day lobbying of officials, and political education. More effective coordination and, yes, professionalization of the anti-war work must not, however, be achieved at the expense of the participatory processes that are the trademark of our movement.
Second, in terms of tactics, new forms of protests must be engaged in. Sanctions and boycotts are methods that must be brought into play. At the Mumbai WSF earlier this year, Arundhati Roy suggested starting with one or two US firms benefiting directly from the war such as Halliburton and Bechtel and mobilizing to close down their operations worldwide. It is time to take her suggestion seriously, not only with respect to US firms but also with Israeli firms and products. Moreover, the level of militance must be raised, with more and more civil disobedience and non-violent disruptions of business as usual encouraged. We must tell Washington and its allies that there can be no business as usual so long as the war continues. The kind of debate taking place in Britain, whether to push peaceful demonstrations or civil disobedience, is fruitless, since both are essential and must be combined in an innovative and effective ways..
In the US, activists can draw on the immensely powerful tradition of disobedience to unjust law that motivated people such as the abolitionists, Henry David Thoreau, the Quakers, and the Berrigan Brothers. Indeed, this kind of resistance might be the key in stopping not only the imperial drive but also the rush to restrict political liberties and democracy. At no other time than today, when the electoral option is gone, is it more necessary to resist the imperial writ nonviolently by invoking a higher law.
Third, it is clear that Great Britain and Italy‹Britain especially are the principal supports of Bush's war policy outside the United States. Bush constantly resorts to invoking these governments to legitimize the US adventure. What happens in Italy, in turn, affects what happens in Britain. Both countries have solid anti-war majorities that must now be converted into a powerful force to disrupt business as usual in these countries ruled by governments complicit in the American war. Both countries have the hallowed tradition of the general strike that, combined with massive civil disobedience, can significantly raise the costs to their government of their support for Washington. When asked why the demonstrations of March 20, 2004 drew significantly fewer people than those of February 2003, many activists in Britain and Italy respond: because people felt their actions were not able to prevent the US from going to war anyway. That sort of defeatism and demoralization can only be countered not by lowering the demands on people but by upping them, by asking them to put their bodies on the line through acts of nonviolent civil resistance.
Fourth, with the Middle East being the strategic battleground of the next few decades, it will be essential to forge links between the global peace movement and the Arab world. The governments of the Middle East are notoriously supine when it comes to the US, so that, as in Europe, it is forging the ties of solidarity among civil movements that must be main thrust of this effort. This will actually be a courageous and controversial step since some of the strongest anti-US movements in the Middle East have been labeled "terrorist" or "terrorist sympathizers" by the US and some European governments. What is important is not to let US-imposed definitions stand in the way of people reaching out to one another to see if there is a basis for working together. Likewise, it is critical for the Palestinian movement and the Israeli anti-Zionist and peace movements to get beyond the labels imposed by governments and find ways of cooperating to end the Israeli occupation. Process has a way of bringing people together from seemingly non-reconcilable political positions. In this regard, the Beirut Anti-War Assembly that took place in mid-September 2004, with strong representation from the global peace movement and social movements from all over the Arab world, was a significant step in this direction.
As it enters its second term, the Bush agenda remains the same: global domination. Our response is the same: global resistance. There is only one thing that can frustrate the empire's dark aims in Iraq, Palestine, and elsewhere: militant solidarity among world's peoples. Making that solidarity real and powerful and ultimately triumphant is the challenge before us.
*Executive Director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South and Professor of Sociology and Public Administration at the University of the Philippines.
The Second Term
November 05, 2004 0503 GMT
By George Friedman
The election is over and the worst did not happen. The United States is not locked in endless litigation, with the legitimacy of the new government challenged. George W. Bush has been re-elected in a clear victory. Depending on your point of view, this might have been the best imaginable outcome or the second-worst possible outcome. Possibly, for some, it is the worst outcome, with complete governmental meltdown being preferable to four more years of Bush. However, these arguments are now moot. Bush has been re-elected, and that is all there is to that.
This means that for slightly more than four years the United States will be governed by a president who will never run for political office again. In general, two-term presidents tend to be less interested in political process than in their place in history. They tend to become more aggressive in trying to complete their perceived missions, and less cautious in the chances they take. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton all encountered serious problems in their second terms, most due to their handling of problems they experienced in their first terms. Nixon had Watergate, while Reagan was handling Central American issues and hostages. Clinton wound up impeached for his handling of matters in his second term.
Going further back in the century, Woodrow Wilson had the League of Nations fiasco in his second term, and Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court. Dwight Eisenhower alone, his place in history assured, did not suffer serious setbacks from misjudgments, unless you want to view Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin and the shooting down of the U-2 over Soviet air space as personal failures.
Second-term presidents tend to look at re-election as vindication of their first-term policies and as a repudiation of their critics. They see themselves as having fewer constraints placed on them, and they become less sensitive to political nuances.
Bush is an interesting case because he was not particularly sensitive to political nuance in his first term. It is difficult to remember a president in his first term who was less constrained by political considerations or political consequences. For better or worse, Bush did not govern with one eye on public opinion polls. As we learned in the course of his term, he was not particularly flexible, even when he was running for re-election. We therefore need to imagine a George W. Bush who is not relatively, but completely, indifferent to political nuance.
Add to this that his legacy is far from assured. Bush's presidency will be measured by one thing: Sept. 11 and his response to it. It is far from clear how history will judge him. There are many parts to the puzzle -- from Iraq, to homeland defense to Pakistan and so on. They are moving parts. For Bush to assure his legacy, he must bring the conflict to a successful conclusion -- not easy for a conflict in which success remains unclear.
We therefore have two forces at work. First, second-term presidents tend to feel much greater freedom of action than first-term presidents -- and tend to take greater risks. Second, Bush enters his second term with greater pressure on his legacy than most presidents have. Bush needs to make something happen, he needs to get the war under control, and he does not have all that much time to do it. If he is to complete his task before the end of his second term, he needs to start acting right now. It is our expectation that he will.
His re-election represents the first step. Globally, there was a perception that Bush had blundered massively. There has also been a long-standing myth that the United States cannot stand its ground because casualties generate decisive antiwar movements. In spite of the fact that Nixon buried George McGovern in 1972, and followed with the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, global expectations have always been that events in Iraq would generate a massive antiwar movement that would force Bush from office.
This expectation was first shaken by Sen. John Kerry's campaign. For all his criticism, Kerry did not campaign against the war. He campaigned against Bush. This was explained in many circles as merely what Kerry had to say to get elected, and that after election his true colors would emerge. However, to more sensitive ears, the fact that Kerry had to campaign as he did in order to have a hope of election was jarring. The antiwar vote was too small for the theory. With Bush's victory, one of the fundamental assumptions about the United States went out the window. In spite of casualties and grievous errors, not only was there no antiwar candidate (save Ralph Nader), but Bush actually won the election.
This puts in motion two processes in the world. First, there is a major rethinking of American staying power in the war going on. The assumption of a rapid conclusion of the Iraq campaign due to U.S. withdrawal is gone -- and it is surprising just how many non-Americans believed this to be a likely scenario. The reassessment of the United States is accompanied by the realization that the United States will not only maintain its pressure in Iraq, but on the region and the globe itself.
American pressure is not insubstantial. Virtually every country in the world wants something from the United States, from a trade agreement to support on a local conflict. They can do without an accommodation with the United States for months, but there is frequently serious pain associated with being at odds with the United States for years. Throughout the world, nations that have resisted U.S. actions in the war -- both within and outside of the region -- must now consider whether they can resist for years.
We can expect two things from Bush in general: relentlessness and linkage. Having won the election, Bush is not going to abandon his goal of crushing al Qaeda and pacifying Iraq and, indeed, the region. That is understood. Equally understood is that Bush will reward friends. Bush's test of friendship is simple: support for the United States and, in particular, support for the policies being pursued by his administration in the war. For Bush, active support for the war was a litmus test for good relations with the United States during the first term. The second term will make the first term look gentle.
Countries that made the decision not to support Bush did so with the assumption that they could absorb the cost for a while. They must now recalculate to see if they can absorb the cost for four more years -- and even beyond, if Bush's successor pursues his policies. For many countries, what was a temporary disagreement is about to turn into a strategic misalignment with the United States. Some countries will continue on their path, others will reconsider. There will be a reshuffling of the global deck in the coming months.
The same analysis being made in the world is also being made in Iraq. There are the guerrillas, most of whom are committed to fighting the United States to the death. But the guerrillas are not a massive force, and they depend for their survival and operational capabilities on a supportive population. In Iraq, support comes from the top down. It is the tribal elders, the senior clergy and the village leaders who make the crucial decisions. They are the ones who decide whether there will be popular support or not.
There has been an assumption in Iraq -- as there has in the world -- that as the pressure builds up in Iraq, the United States will move to abandon the war. Bush's re-election clearly indicates that the United States will not be abandoning the war. They are therefore recalculating their positions in the same way that the rest of the world is. Holding out against the Americans and allowing their populations to aid the guerrillas made a great deal of sense if the United States was about to retreat from Iraq. It is quite another matter if the United States is actually going to be increasing pressure.
It is no accident that as Election Day approached, U.S. forces very publicly -- and very slowly -- massed around Al Fallujah. Al Fallujah was the town in which the United States signed its first accord with the guerrillas. As the election approached, the town went out of control. Now the election is over, the town is surrounded and Bush is president. It is a time for recalculation in Al Fallujah as well, as there can be no doubt but that Bush is free to attack and might well do it.
Throughout the Sunni areas of Iraq -- as well as Shiite regions -- elders are considering their positions, caught between the United States and the guerrillas, in light of the new permanence of the Americans. The United States will be aggressive, but in an interesting way. It will be using the threat of American power as a lever to force the Sunni leadership into reducing support for the guerrillas. Coupled with the carrot of enormous bribes, the strategy could work. It might not eliminate the guerrilla war, but could reduce it to a nuisance level.
The basic reality thus creates the strategy. The re-election of Bush creates a new reality at all levels in the international system. His intransigence, coupled with American power, forces players to think about whether they can hold their positions for at least four years, or whether they must adjust their positions in some way. As the players -- from sheikhs to prime ministers -- reconsider their positions, U.S. power increases, trying to pry them loose. It opens the possibility of negotiations and settlements in unexpected places.
It also opens the door to potential disaster. The danger is that Bush will simultaneously overestimate his power and feel unbearable pressure to act quickly. This has led some previous presidents into massive errors of judgment. Put differently, the pressures and opportunities of the second term caused them to execute policies that appeared to be solutions but that blew up in their faces. None of them knew they would blow up, but in their circumstances, no one was sufficiently cautious.
It is precisely Bush's lack of caution that now becomes his greatest bargaining chip. But his greatest strength can also become his greatest weakness. The struggle between these two poles will mark the first part of his presidency. We will find out whether the second part will be the success of this strategy or his downfall. The book on George W. Bush will now be written.
Strategic Forecasting
By George Friedman
The election is over and the worst did not happen. The United States is not locked in endless litigation, with the legitimacy of the new government challenged. George W. Bush has been re-elected in a clear victory. Depending on your point of view, this might have been the best imaginable outcome or the second-worst possible outcome. Possibly, for some, it is the worst outcome, with complete governmental meltdown being preferable to four more years of Bush. However, these arguments are now moot. Bush has been re-elected, and that is all there is to that.
This means that for slightly more than four years the United States will be governed by a president who will never run for political office again. In general, two-term presidents tend to be less interested in political process than in their place in history. They tend to become more aggressive in trying to complete their perceived missions, and less cautious in the chances they take. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton all encountered serious problems in their second terms, most due to their handling of problems they experienced in their first terms. Nixon had Watergate, while Reagan was handling Central American issues and hostages. Clinton wound up impeached for his handling of matters in his second term.
Going further back in the century, Woodrow Wilson had the League of Nations fiasco in his second term, and Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court. Dwight Eisenhower alone, his place in history assured, did not suffer serious setbacks from misjudgments, unless you want to view Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin and the shooting down of the U-2 over Soviet air space as personal failures.
Second-term presidents tend to look at re-election as vindication of their first-term policies and as a repudiation of their critics. They see themselves as having fewer constraints placed on them, and they become less sensitive to political nuances.
Bush is an interesting case because he was not particularly sensitive to political nuance in his first term. It is difficult to remember a president in his first term who was less constrained by political considerations or political consequences. For better or worse, Bush did not govern with one eye on public opinion polls. As we learned in the course of his term, he was not particularly flexible, even when he was running for re-election. We therefore need to imagine a George W. Bush who is not relatively, but completely, indifferent to political nuance.
Add to this that his legacy is far from assured. Bush's presidency will be measured by one thing: Sept. 11 and his response to it. It is far from clear how history will judge him. There are many parts to the puzzle -- from Iraq, to homeland defense to Pakistan and so on. They are moving parts. For Bush to assure his legacy, he must bring the conflict to a successful conclusion -- not easy for a conflict in which success remains unclear.
We therefore have two forces at work. First, second-term presidents tend to feel much greater freedom of action than first-term presidents -- and tend to take greater risks. Second, Bush enters his second term with greater pressure on his legacy than most presidents have. Bush needs to make something happen, he needs to get the war under control, and he does not have all that much time to do it. If he is to complete his task before the end of his second term, he needs to start acting right now. It is our expectation that he will.
His re-election represents the first step. Globally, there was a perception that Bush had blundered massively. There has also been a long-standing myth that the United States cannot stand its ground because casualties generate decisive antiwar movements. In spite of the fact that Nixon buried George McGovern in 1972, and followed with the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, global expectations have always been that events in Iraq would generate a massive antiwar movement that would force Bush from office.
This expectation was first shaken by Sen. John Kerry's campaign. For all his criticism, Kerry did not campaign against the war. He campaigned against Bush. This was explained in many circles as merely what Kerry had to say to get elected, and that after election his true colors would emerge. However, to more sensitive ears, the fact that Kerry had to campaign as he did in order to have a hope of election was jarring. The antiwar vote was too small for the theory. With Bush's victory, one of the fundamental assumptions about the United States went out the window. In spite of casualties and grievous errors, not only was there no antiwar candidate (save Ralph Nader), but Bush actually won the election.
This puts in motion two processes in the world. First, there is a major rethinking of American staying power in the war going on. The assumption of a rapid conclusion of the Iraq campaign due to U.S. withdrawal is gone -- and it is surprising just how many non-Americans believed this to be a likely scenario. The reassessment of the United States is accompanied by the realization that the United States will not only maintain its pressure in Iraq, but on the region and the globe itself.
American pressure is not insubstantial. Virtually every country in the world wants something from the United States, from a trade agreement to support on a local conflict. They can do without an accommodation with the United States for months, but there is frequently serious pain associated with being at odds with the United States for years. Throughout the world, nations that have resisted U.S. actions in the war -- both within and outside of the region -- must now consider whether they can resist for years.
We can expect two things from Bush in general: relentlessness and linkage. Having won the election, Bush is not going to abandon his goal of crushing al Qaeda and pacifying Iraq and, indeed, the region. That is understood. Equally understood is that Bush will reward friends. Bush's test of friendship is simple: support for the United States and, in particular, support for the policies being pursued by his administration in the war. For Bush, active support for the war was a litmus test for good relations with the United States during the first term. The second term will make the first term look gentle.
Countries that made the decision not to support Bush did so with the assumption that they could absorb the cost for a while. They must now recalculate to see if they can absorb the cost for four more years -- and even beyond, if Bush's successor pursues his policies. For many countries, what was a temporary disagreement is about to turn into a strategic misalignment with the United States. Some countries will continue on their path, others will reconsider. There will be a reshuffling of the global deck in the coming months.
The same analysis being made in the world is also being made in Iraq. There are the guerrillas, most of whom are committed to fighting the United States to the death. But the guerrillas are not a massive force, and they depend for their survival and operational capabilities on a supportive population. In Iraq, support comes from the top down. It is the tribal elders, the senior clergy and the village leaders who make the crucial decisions. They are the ones who decide whether there will be popular support or not.
There has been an assumption in Iraq -- as there has in the world -- that as the pressure builds up in Iraq, the United States will move to abandon the war. Bush's re-election clearly indicates that the United States will not be abandoning the war. They are therefore recalculating their positions in the same way that the rest of the world is. Holding out against the Americans and allowing their populations to aid the guerrillas made a great deal of sense if the United States was about to retreat from Iraq. It is quite another matter if the United States is actually going to be increasing pressure.
It is no accident that as Election Day approached, U.S. forces very publicly -- and very slowly -- massed around Al Fallujah. Al Fallujah was the town in which the United States signed its first accord with the guerrillas. As the election approached, the town went out of control. Now the election is over, the town is surrounded and Bush is president. It is a time for recalculation in Al Fallujah as well, as there can be no doubt but that Bush is free to attack and might well do it.
Throughout the Sunni areas of Iraq -- as well as Shiite regions -- elders are considering their positions, caught between the United States and the guerrillas, in light of the new permanence of the Americans. The United States will be aggressive, but in an interesting way. It will be using the threat of American power as a lever to force the Sunni leadership into reducing support for the guerrillas. Coupled with the carrot of enormous bribes, the strategy could work. It might not eliminate the guerrilla war, but could reduce it to a nuisance level.
The basic reality thus creates the strategy. The re-election of Bush creates a new reality at all levels in the international system. His intransigence, coupled with American power, forces players to think about whether they can hold their positions for at least four years, or whether they must adjust their positions in some way. As the players -- from sheikhs to prime ministers -- reconsider their positions, U.S. power increases, trying to pry them loose. It opens the possibility of negotiations and settlements in unexpected places.
It also opens the door to potential disaster. The danger is that Bush will simultaneously overestimate his power and feel unbearable pressure to act quickly. This has led some previous presidents into massive errors of judgment. Put differently, the pressures and opportunities of the second term caused them to execute policies that appeared to be solutions but that blew up in their faces. None of them knew they would blow up, but in their circumstances, no one was sufficiently cautious.
It is precisely Bush's lack of caution that now becomes his greatest bargaining chip. But his greatest strength can also become his greatest weakness. The struggle between these two poles will mark the first part of his presidency. We will find out whether the second part will be the success of this strategy or his downfall. The book on George W. Bush will now be written.
Strategic Forecasting
The wait continues for a free press
scmp - Tuesday, November 2, 2004
NAILENE CHOU WIEST in Beijing
When President Hu Jintao was handed the military mandate in September - enabling him to consolidate his power as party chief, president and commander-in-chief - expectations for a new era of press freedom ran high.
Mr Hu, perceived as more willing to listen to the people than his predecessor, Jiang Zemin , also had a large following among the mainland's 87 million internet users.
Regarding him as reformist, the tech-savvy and better educated cheered him in cyberspace, addressing him casually as Tao Ge (Brother Tao). He was credited with being open, unpretentious and tolerant, while Mr Jiang was blamed for repression of the media.
But analysts noted that Mr Hu was not in a position to relax media controls because his grip on power was not yet firm.
Mr Jiang's faction was still deeply entrenched in the power structure while the ultra-conservative faction that challenged the former president's move to admit entrepreneurs to the Communist Party was plotting a comeback.
Zhenli de Zhuiqiu (Pursuit of Truth), a publication of communist orthodoxy that stopped printing just before the 16th Party Congress in 2002, was pushing to restart its presses.
Adding to the divisiveness of the two factions was the call for intra-party democracy and rising social tension from more violent mass protests. Sources said that amid such challenges, Mr Hu was unlikely to relax media controls until he felt sufficiently secure, probably at the fifth plenum next year.
Now that Mr Hu has become the undisputed leader, his reformist credentials have come under closer scrutiny and little suggests that he will be more tolerant of press freedom than his predecessors.
"Hu did not differ from Jiang on political reforms," said Ren Wanding , a veteran pro-democracy activist.
Holding up a strengthened party as the ideal of his so-called political "reform", Mr Hu actually took a step back on democracy, he said.
The sacking of two predecessors, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang , who differed from then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping on democratic reform, taught President Hu that deviation from the established path was extremely risky, Mr Ren said.
Mr Hu put an end to all speculation about his reformist tendencies in the closing statement of the fourth plenum of the Communist Party's central committee - drafted under his watch.
The document underscored the importance of guiding public opinion and increasing the effectiveness of propaganda. It reaffirmed the party's control of the media and highlighted the task of monitoring the internet and its impact.
"The system of control must be strengthened and a cyberspace propaganda team be formed to guide the public opinion on the internet," it said.
The propaganda department compiles a daily briefing, the Chinese Language Network Information, to monitor public discussion and keep top leaders abreast of prevailing opinions culled from internet chat rooms.
Until recently, the internet had been a more open field for critical thinking and writing, media sources said, but the increasing controls through filters, blocked sites and censorship sometimes made the print media a better source of information, especially on nationalistic issues.
In the run-up to the fourth plenum, several popular websites known for critical views were shut down. The closure of the Peking University campus chat room, Yitahutu, became a cause célèbre, rallying intellectuals and overseas supporters. The chatroom is still closed.
Zhao Yan , a researcher for The New York Times and an activist for farmers' rights, was arrested after the plenum for allegedly passing state secrets to foreign media.
Causing even more consternation among progressive journalists was the expulsion of Cheng Yizhong , executive editor of the Southern Metropolis News, from the Communist Party. Mr Cheng ran afoul of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party Committee in Guangzhou after publishing an expos?on the death of Sun Zhigang , a young university graduate who died in police custody. The national outrage over the incident became profoundly embarrassing for the local party boss.
Mr Cheng was arrested in March for allegedly giving and receiving bribes and was released in September after insufficient evidence was found to bring formal charges against him.
But on October 22, when the Southern Daily Group, which owns the Southern Metropolis Daily, was busy celebrating its 55th birthday, the discipline committee of the provincial party committee served notice of Mr Cheng's expulsion.
Media sources said the punishment disregarded the court's decision not to indict Mr Cheng.
NAILENE CHOU WIEST in Beijing
When President Hu Jintao was handed the military mandate in September - enabling him to consolidate his power as party chief, president and commander-in-chief - expectations for a new era of press freedom ran high.
Mr Hu, perceived as more willing to listen to the people than his predecessor, Jiang Zemin , also had a large following among the mainland's 87 million internet users.
Regarding him as reformist, the tech-savvy and better educated cheered him in cyberspace, addressing him casually as Tao Ge (Brother Tao). He was credited with being open, unpretentious and tolerant, while Mr Jiang was blamed for repression of the media.
But analysts noted that Mr Hu was not in a position to relax media controls because his grip on power was not yet firm.
Mr Jiang's faction was still deeply entrenched in the power structure while the ultra-conservative faction that challenged the former president's move to admit entrepreneurs to the Communist Party was plotting a comeback.
Zhenli de Zhuiqiu (Pursuit of Truth), a publication of communist orthodoxy that stopped printing just before the 16th Party Congress in 2002, was pushing to restart its presses.
Adding to the divisiveness of the two factions was the call for intra-party democracy and rising social tension from more violent mass protests. Sources said that amid such challenges, Mr Hu was unlikely to relax media controls until he felt sufficiently secure, probably at the fifth plenum next year.
Now that Mr Hu has become the undisputed leader, his reformist credentials have come under closer scrutiny and little suggests that he will be more tolerant of press freedom than his predecessors.
"Hu did not differ from Jiang on political reforms," said Ren Wanding , a veteran pro-democracy activist.
Holding up a strengthened party as the ideal of his so-called political "reform", Mr Hu actually took a step back on democracy, he said.
The sacking of two predecessors, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang , who differed from then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping on democratic reform, taught President Hu that deviation from the established path was extremely risky, Mr Ren said.
Mr Hu put an end to all speculation about his reformist tendencies in the closing statement of the fourth plenum of the Communist Party's central committee - drafted under his watch.
The document underscored the importance of guiding public opinion and increasing the effectiveness of propaganda. It reaffirmed the party's control of the media and highlighted the task of monitoring the internet and its impact.
"The system of control must be strengthened and a cyberspace propaganda team be formed to guide the public opinion on the internet," it said.
The propaganda department compiles a daily briefing, the Chinese Language Network Information, to monitor public discussion and keep top leaders abreast of prevailing opinions culled from internet chat rooms.
Until recently, the internet had been a more open field for critical thinking and writing, media sources said, but the increasing controls through filters, blocked sites and censorship sometimes made the print media a better source of information, especially on nationalistic issues.
In the run-up to the fourth plenum, several popular websites known for critical views were shut down. The closure of the Peking University campus chat room, Yitahutu, became a cause célèbre, rallying intellectuals and overseas supporters. The chatroom is still closed.
Zhao Yan , a researcher for The New York Times and an activist for farmers' rights, was arrested after the plenum for allegedly passing state secrets to foreign media.
Causing even more consternation among progressive journalists was the expulsion of Cheng Yizhong , executive editor of the Southern Metropolis News, from the Communist Party. Mr Cheng ran afoul of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party Committee in Guangzhou after publishing an expos?on the death of Sun Zhigang , a young university graduate who died in police custody. The national outrage over the incident became profoundly embarrassing for the local party boss.
Mr Cheng was arrested in March for allegedly giving and receiving bribes and was released in September after insufficient evidence was found to bring formal charges against him.
But on October 22, when the Southern Daily Group, which owns the Southern Metropolis Daily, was busy celebrating its 55th birthday, the discipline committee of the provincial party committee served notice of Mr Cheng's expulsion.
Media sources said the punishment disregarded the court's decision not to indict Mr Cheng.
