Threat to Humanity - Bush’s New Military Doctrine

Threat to Humanity - Bush’s New Military Doctrine

By Sam Webb, National Chair, Communist Party USA

Three weeks ago the Bush administration announced a new strategic-military policy, titled, “The National Security Strategy of the United States,” which, to put it bluntly, is a promissory note for unending and calamitous war.

What are some of the main features of this new doctrine?

Perhaps most ominous, nuclear weapons are now weapons of first, rather than last, resort. Their use is envisioned in a range of military theaters. In the warped thinking of the Bush administration, “limited nuclear war” is no longer an oxymoron, but rather, a preferred policy.

Pre-emptive strikes are a legitimate and even favored method of warfare against states that supposedly pose a threat to the US.

The US reserves the right to police and punish, and annihilate with overwhelming force nations and peoples that it deems ‘enemies of civilization’.

Preventing the emergence of a rival state power - be it friend or foe - is an essential requirement.

Transforming the US military and further increasing its already unprecedented advantage over its closest competitor for the full length of the 21st century is a top priority. This includes the ability to engage in more than two conflicts simultaneously.

A unilateral, go-it-alone posture is preferred over multilateralism. The idea is that assembling a coalition of like-minded governments too often constrains or slows down the projection of US power.

International law, treaties and obligations that limit the US’s ability to act in a decisive manner, wherever and whenever, are to be ignored.

Far less weight is attached to diplomacy and stability in international relations. In fact, instability is seen as something that may well offer opportunities to project US military power to distant corners of the globe.

At first glance it might seem that the new Bush policy is a response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. But on closer inspection, a different picture emerges.

Actually, the strategic perspectives of this policy appeared in earlier position papers. As far back as the early 1990s, and as recently as two years ago, documents were being discussed in the top circles of our nation’s ruling class that bear a remarkable resemblance to the new policy.

The earlier versions, however, never became government policy. One, written during the latter days of the first Bush administration and leaked to the New York Times, was greeted by a storm of criticism, while the more recent versions never attracted much attention beyond a small group of right wing ideologues, including many of the current operatives in the Bush administration.

But the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, changed everything. They gave the administration a pretext and a legitimizing discourse to employ a much more aggressive, militarist, and ultimately exceedingly dangerous strategy to bring about a qualitative and permanent change in the world balance of forces, wherein US imperialism and its transnational corporations absolutely dominate the world for the near and long term.

Previous US governments, to be sure, were not lambs in the international arena. The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and the relentless bombing of Yugoslavia in the mid-nineties are the bookends on five decades of covert and overt intervention against states and peoples.

And yet to see only the similarities between the policies of present and past governments misses the point, which is that the new Bush administration doctrine constitutes a qualitative break from the underpinnings of US foreign policy going back to the Cold War.

Or, to put it differently, the new policy represents not a subtle adjustment, but rather, a radical change of doctrine. It elevates the danger of aggression, militarism, and war to an entirely new level. With the not-so-neutral goal of ‘regime change’, it endangers the lives and livelihoods of millions. It will, almost inevitably, exacerbate the terrorist danger in our country and elsewhere. And in an era when weapons of mass destruction proliferate it makes doomsday a real possibility.

It will also immeasurably sharpen the right wing offensive against the working class, racially and nationally oppressed people, women, and other social forces in our country. If the September 11 terrorist attack was simply a pretext, what then were the changes in the objective situation worldwide that convinced the Bush White House to pursue such a reckless policy? Without being exhaustive, three developments come to mind.

First, the disintegration of the Soviet Union a decade ago removed the one state rival able to confront and contest the aggressive actions of US imperialism. It is no accident that the initial thinking regarding this new military-strategic policy coincided with the collapse of Soviet socialism.

Second, US imperialism’s overwhelming military strength vis-a-vis both friends and foes confers an enormous - really historically unprecedented - advantage to shape and reshape the world in the interests of US transnational corporations. Never, according to scholars of international affairs, has a state possessed such an advantage.

Finally, the new level of capitalist globalization, the slowdown of the global economy and the accompanying intensified competition among rival capitalisms in already over subscribed global markets pushed the US ruling class, and particularly its most reactionary sector, to pursue a more aggressive policy. In a word, it aims to utilize its superiority on the military and political level to achieve a vastly stronger position on the economic level.

But as important as these changes in the global picture are, they do not by themselves explain how this new policy gained the upper hand. Of decisive importance was the ascendancy of the most right-wing sections of transnational capital and their representatives in American political life. Had the extreme right not grabbed the main levers of power over the past decade, culminating with the theft of the presidency in the 2000 elections, it is unlikely that our government would embrace such an adventurist and dangerous foreign policy.

In other words, this policy change is as much – if not more -- a product of a political struggle within and between classes and social forces in our country, as it is the outcome of capitalist globalization/imperialism and the changed balance of forces resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago.

Immediately after September 11, few voices challenged this policy. But a year does make a difference. Dissident and increasingly insistent voices -- from respected Congress people to political observers, to growing numbers of ordinary Americans -- are taking issue with the Bush administration’s global ambitions.

Jay Bookman, deputy editorial page editor of the Atlanta Constitution, recently wrote, “In essence, it [Bush’s policy] lays out a plan for U.S. military and economic domination of every region of the globe, unfettered by internal treaty or concern. And to make that plan a reality, it envisions a stark expansion of our global military presence.”

In a similar vein, G. John Ikenberry, writing in Foreign Affairs, said “America’s nascent neoimperial strategy threatens to rend the fabric of the international community and political partnerships … It is an approach that is fraught with peril and will likely fail. It is not only politically unsustainable but diplomatically harmful. And if history is a guide, it will trigger antagonism and resistance that will leave America in a more hostile and divided world.”

And isn’t this already evident? The rush to invade Iraq with deadly force has met with resistance among the American people – not to mention people in both near and distant lands – who are not only suspicious of the administration’s Iraq policy, but also of the overall direction of Bush’s military-strategic plans.

People are realizing that the war danger won’t exhaust itself -- it won’t run out of steam on its own. And leaders of the labor and people’s movements are recognizing that they can’t be silent about an invasion of Iraq and Bush’s new war doctrine without sacrificing the lives and livelihoods of their own constituencies.

Thus, it is becoming clearer that the struggle against the growing war danger is the dominant and defining political reality in our own country for the foreseeable future. This struggle will shape and condition every other struggle and issue.

The meaning of the war danger increasingly strikes a nerve among a cross section of people, as aggression abroad combines at home with rising racial and gender inequality, a spreading economic crisis, and gross restrictions on democratic and union rights, including the use of Taft-Hartley in an attempt to crush the West Coast longshore union.

At this moment, the interrelated tasks of preventing an attack on Iraq and taking the Congress out of the hands of the ultra right on November 5 are the front lines of resistance to Bush’s plans for world domination.

Indeed nothing, absolutely nothing, will weaken more the overall war drive of the Bush administration -- and in so doing create the best conditions to fight the mounting economic crisis and for people’s needs and rights-- than blocking the war and shifting the political balance in Congress against the extreme right.

The defeat of right wing Republicans will amount to a repudiation of Bush’s policies on every front.

The White House is well aware of this and is therefore attempting to give a sense of inevitability to its plans to invade Iraq and its efforts to win the Senate and maintain control of the House.

Thus, the stakes are high, the lines are more clearly drawn, and above all, the struggle is winnable.

In recent weeks a broadly based and loosely-knit movement has begun to emerge against Bush’s militarist policies – policies that, not unimportantly, have an exceedingly narrow objective social base and can be reversed with struggle.

While many commentators have noted the capitulation of the Democratic Party leadership, more salient is the emergence of a significant bloc in Congress that opposes the war drive and the rapidly growing anti-war and worker-to- worker solidarity sentiment and initiative within the labor movement. Increasingly, labor leaders and official bodies have issued statements opposing Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

When combined with the new level of peace activity in the streets and growing multi-racial unity, it bodes well for the formation of a vast labor- led multi-class front against the reactionary policies of the Bush administration and his reactionary corporate backers.

In the course of this struggle, an alternative vision of our nation’s role in the world community has to find its way into the national dialogue. In this regard, a special responsibility falls on left and progressive forces.

Such a vision should include the non-use of force in international relations, the worldwide destruction of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, the enhancement of the role of the United Nations and its General Assembly, equitable relations between developed and developing countries, repudiation of NAFTA, FTAA and other similar trade treaties, respect for sovereignty rights of big and small states alike, the just and immediate settlements of unresolved conflicts in the world, beginning with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and a readiness on the part of our nation to be an equal and contributing member of the world community with no special rights or privileges.

Of course, the vision of communists and socialists of a just and peaceful world is informed by our socialist ideal. Nearly a hundred years ago Rosa Luxemburg said that the choice facing humanity was “either socialism or barbarism.” At that time, weapons of mass destruction did not exist. But now they do. Thus Rosa’s warning takes on a new urgency, and the struggle for socialism acquires a new necessity.

Once it was the possibility of a better life for humankind that animated the socialist vision. And it still does. But at a moment as dangerous as this one, our socialist vision also offers the best safeguard against war and the destruction of our fragile planet.

For now though, the immediate and urgent task is to assemble the broadest labor-led people’s coalition to derail Bush’s plans to invade Iraq and to sweep the right wing out of Congress on November 5.

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