The Arrogance of the Superpower

By Christoph Bautz, attac Germany

[This leaflet distributed on George W. Bush’s 2004 visit to Germany is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.attac.de.]

When the American president George W. Bush visits Germany this year, the protest will be directed against present American policy, not against America. Like no other, George W. Bush stands for the policy of the global military and economic dominance of the US. To extend this dominance, the US is not afraid of the ruthless use of open violence, whether in the war against Afghanistan and war threats against Iraq, maintaining and strengthening an unjust world economic system or destroying our ecological foundations of life. This policy preserves and extends American power interests and influence worldwide.

PURE UNILATERALISM

With the accession of the Bush administration, America has definitively bid farewell to a world order oriented in cooperation. American policy doesn’t seem to regard adjusting to international agreements and mechanisms as necessary. The US participates where it reaps benefits and isn’t restricted in its freedom of action where it wields the scepter itself as in the international anti-terror alliance.

Treaties that limit the US in fortifying its hegemonial position like the ABM (anti-ballistic missile) treaty are simply cancelled. High soaring plans for an expensive missile defense shield costing hundreds of billions (that cannot be realized practically) are made as though September 11 had not demonstrated that no military security protects against terrorist acts. The money supply is systematically cut off from institutions in which developing countries have a strong influence like the UN. The Kyoto process showed that this American unilateralism is always intensely defined by the profit interests of the US economy.

With Bush, the Texan oil bosses hoisted one of their own into office. He pays them back with an undisguised clientele-policy. The exodus of the Bush administration from the Kyoto protocol was owed to the energy multinationals fearing for their sales. Previously the agreement was completely watered down through American pressure as “climate protection at a snail’s pace”. This went along with an American energy policy that under the pretext of an allegedly brewing energy crisis gives an undreamt-of renaissance to fossil sources of energy and nuclear energy. The recent spectacular collapse of Enron drastically showed the tangle between capital interests, politics and the authorities that should control them.

DEMOCRACY IN DANGER

Bush is not alone with his policy but is only the most powerful representative of the global power cartel named G7, a club of powerful industrial countries (US, Canada, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and Germany). Under its regency, the project of neoliberal globalization is stabilized and promoted worldwide. Although lacking democratic legitimation, its preliminary decisions are often accepted at official informal meetings during international conferences. Bush and the G7 defend the interests of transnational corporations and financial investors. The foundations of our democracies are endangered through their increasing political influence.

An enormous political influence results when financial investors and transnational corporations can withdraw their capital at any time through the globalization of markets. Managers and corporations determine policy, not all of our interests. A global positional competition arises between particular countries over the best investment conditions. Special- and public funds, investment banks and hedge funds invest where the lowest taxes, the highest interests, the lowest inflation rate and the most lax capital resources requirements for financial capital are offered. Transnational corporations invest where the most trifling environmental conditions, taxes and fees, the weakest unions and most flexible wages exist. Whoever submits most reliably to the conditions of the World Bank and the IMF has the best chances for new lines of credit despite massive debts. Whoever cannot keep pace is excluded and marginalized by the brave new globalized world or handed over to the IMF “rescue packages” come what may.

THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE MARKET

The economic policy of the US is always strongly defined by the basic neoliberal ideology: the state has to keep out of economic events. The fetish of the infallibility of the market requires dismantling all control mechanisms. The state is reduced to the role of night watchman, which it then has to fulfill with all severity. America claims these premises of neoliberal economic doctrine for its domestic economy and tries to spread them over the whole world. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) serve as willing agents of American policy. In loyal teamwork, they propagate the boundless freedom of markets and investment streams.

Through the increasing indebtedness of most developing countries, the IMF and the World Bank are in the comfortable position of connecting almost at pleasure far-reaching conditions for approval of additional credits. Liberalization of foreign trade and capital traffic, privatization of state enterprises and reduction of state subsidies for basic food are the magic potions of the neoliberal standard cure. Further credits can be obtained through their consistent observance. With these so-called structural adjustment programs, a drastic cure is administered on developing countries that promises a long-term upswing and growth of internationally competitive branches after initial suffering. In the long run, poverty and unemployment would be overcome. That the medicine usually didn’t take effect as planned when indigenous markets and local producers collapsed in competition with multinationals and increasingly frequent and recurring financial crises shook the unstable economies is explained as inadequate application of the medicine.

The victims of this policy are the majority of the people in developing countries. Their access to food, basic medical care and education is made difficult through this policy. They lose their jobs while new jobs are not created in the same number and quality and fall through the increasingly wide-meshed social nets. The consequences for many people are loss of perspectives, regional uprooting and individualization.

THE MODEL OF BIG BROTHER

This policy is becoming more and more the model for Europe’s governments. With the same arguments, the storm on the social state is encouraged and many achievements of deregulation and flexibilization wrested from capitalism in the last 150 years are sacrificed. This policy was even easier to implement under European “leftist” governments. The lowering of income-, inheritance- and corporation taxes under the Bush administration is continued in the Red-Green tax policy. The global positional competition orders tax relief for capital so new investments and additional jobs can arise. Billions in gifts to big businesses and the wealth occur with tax abatements for corporations and further reductions of the top tax rates and the corporation tax. Redistribution upwards from below continues. While new jobs through the tax relief are a long time in coming, the money for an active labor market policy is lacking because of the decline of tax revenues.

The alleged American job wonder has a similar model function. With disciplining instruments, the unemployed and receivers of social security should now be forced to accept uncertain and underpaid work in Germany. The erosion or undermining of the wage system leads to widespread wage dumping and endangers working standards. The increasing privatization of social risks occurs in the land of unlimited possibilities. Slogans like “freedom of choice” and “personal responsibility” suggest more freedom that after the further dismantling of social security systems only comes to higher-income persons. Under the excuse of a worldwide adjustment pressure accelerating through neoliberal globalization, the supposedly wholesome market forces should gain access in the German public health system. Irrespective of all election promises, a division in a state basic care and an additional private care according to means and risk assessment threatens. The result is an unsolidarian multi-class medicine. Sickness threatens to become a poverty risk again.

RE-REGULATION INSTEAD OF DEREGULATION

A global order must counter the mounting influence of financial investors and transnational corporations. This regulation must start on different planes – global, regional, national and local. As part of the newly arising global justice movement, attac makes different proposals for a stronger regulation of the world economy. Introduction of a tax on currency transactions (Tobin tax), closing tax havens, a fair worldwide taxation on capital and introduction of environmental- and social standards would be first steps in the right direction. However the negative attitude of the American administration serves as a killer argument preventing the necessary regulation of the world economy. Taking the first reform steps isn’t practical without America. Germany’s own deficient political will for change is brilliantly covered up.

The pressure of the global justice movement must have two addressants. Firstly, American unilateralism and the neoliberal policy of the US and the G7 must be tackled resolutely. Secondly, a counter-project to the unilateral American system must be developed. Even if the policy of the EU (European Union) is infected by the same neoliberal spirit of the times, turning away and a reconsideration of welfare state traditions still seems easier here. Demands for harmonizing the European tax system on a higher level, consistent goals in social policy and introduction of a subsistence income are guidelines for a European alternative beyond neoliberalism. At the same time, German and European policy must be decisively different from American unilateralism and refuse military policy in the aegis of allegedly combating terrorism. The flattering policy of unrestricted solidarity with America must be ended.

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE

Since the protests in Seattle and Genoa, the global justice movement has hoped for political change from the streets. Neoliberal globalization is no longer regarded as a fateful process without alternative to which politics must submit. With attac and the movement, more and more people nourish the hope that fundamental political changes are possible. In these days, the main addressant of our protests against neoliberalism and war mongering is George W. Bush. Let us show him that we will no longer put up with his policies against the great majority. Let us peacefully and decisively resist to make possible another world.