<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title> </head> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"> Always had great respect for Kolko, and he is in fine form in this essay. If you believe as I do that America depends on the world much more than the world depends on America, them you must conclude that US "foriegn" policy determines "domestic" policy and that therefore issues of foriegn policy are of overriding priority.  IOW, prospects for the future of American workers depend on their nation-state's relations with other states.  So to stand for women's rights or a higher minimum wage in America (ostensivly Kerry) while capitulating to Kerry on the Iraq War as the American Democratic Party Left has obviously done, is to espouse a reactionary America First utopian dream, utopian  since it can never come true, and in practice to be against extending women's rights or the minumum wage, since the "foriegn" policy won't permit it. <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/">Sydney Morning Herald</a> Alliances and the American election By Gabriel Kolko August 25, 2004 <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/smh27.htm">http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/smh27.htm</a> "It was the Democratic Party that created most of the pillars of postwar American foreign policy, from the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and NATO through the institutionalization of the arms race and the illusion that weapons and firepower are a solution to many of the world's political problems. The Democrats share, in the name of a truly "bipartisan" consensus, equal responsibility for both the character and dilemmas of America's foreign strategy at the present moment. President Jimmy Carter initiated the Afghanistan adventure in July 1979, hoping to bog down the Soviets there as the Americans had been in Vietnam. And it was Carter who first encouraged Saddam Hussein to confront Iranian fundamentalism, a policy President Reagan continued." "Joseph E. Stiglitz, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1997, argues that the Clinton Administration intensified the "hegemonic legacy" in the world economy, and Bush is just continuing it. The 1990s was "A decade of unparalleled American influence over the global economy" that Democratic financiers and fiscal conservatives in key posts defined, "in which one economic crisis seemed to follow another." The U.S. created trade barriers and gave large subsidies to its own agribusiness but countries in financial straits were advised and often compelled to cut spending and "adopt policies that were markedly different from those that we ourselves had adopted." (1) The scale of domestic and global peculation by the Clinton and Bush administrations can be debated but they were enormous in both cases." "In foreign and military affairs, both the Clinton and Bush administrations have suffered from the same procurement fetish, believing that expensive weapons are superior to realistic political strategies. The same illusions produced the Vietnam War - and disaster. Elegant strategies promising technological routes to victory have been with us since the late 1940s, but they are essentially public relations exercises intended to encourage more orders for arms manufacturers and justifications for bigger budgets for the rival military services. During the Clinton years the Pentagon continued to concoct grandiose strategies and it demanded - and got - new weapons to implement them. There are many ways to measure defense expenditures over time but - minor annual fluctuations notwithstanding - the consensus between the two parties on the Pentagon's budgets has persisted since 1945. In January 2000 Clinton added $115 billion to the Pentagon's 5-year plan, far more than the Republicans were calling for. When Clinton left office the Pentagon had over a half trillion dollars in the major weapons procurement pipeline, not counting the ballistic missile defense systems -- which is a pure boondoggle that cost over $71 billion by 1999. The dilemma, as both CIA and senior Clinton officials correctly warned, was that terrorists were more likely to strike the American homeland than some nation against whom the military could retaliate. This fundamental disparity between hardware and reality has always existed and September 11, 2001 showed how vulnerable and weak the US has become. (2)" "The war in Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 brought the future of NATO and the alliance, and especially Washington's deepening anxiety regarding Germany's possible independent role in Europe, to a head. Well before Bush took office, the Clinton Administration resolved never to allow its allies to inhibit or define its strategy again. Bush's policies, notwithstanding the brutal way in which they have been expressed or implemented, follows logically from this crucial decision. NATO's failure in Afghanistan, and its members' refusal to contribute the soldiers and equipment essential to end warlordism and allow fair elections to be held (it sent five times as many troops to Kosovo in 1999), is the logic of America's bipartisan disdain for the alliance." (Bravo!) ..... </body> </html>