vonjobi: wow, congratulations! kelan ang trip? i hope i'll be around when you come. had a good time with diosa last...
Keith Bacongco: Knowing Nograles and his Big Boss...garapalan na lang talaga.
Vinia Datinguinoo Mukherjee: Congratulations, PCIJ! Mabuhay kayo!
Lead Philippines: But without credible mass media there, what is left to protect the people..?
vonjobi: it's juned sOniDo.

Latest Message 3 months, 4 weeks ago

hopeless_race : Lets not just focus sa mga malversation of funds, sa mga overpricing..ating pagtuunan ng atensyon ang diskarte ng mga politiko na umuutang ng bilyon bilyon sa gobyerno."Small time" ang ibang pamamaraan ng pangungurakot kumpara sa pag-utang sa gobyerno ng bilyon na tunay ngang masasabing "pinaka big-time" at wala pang sabit.
hopeless_race : Mukhang tikom ang bibig ng lahat pagdating sa diskarte ng mga politiko sa pagutang ng mga bilyon bilyon sa gobyerno na tinatakbuhan. Itong pamamaraan na ito ang tunay na kumakain ng malaking porsyento ng ating national budget batay na din sa sinasabi ng world bank.
hopeless_race : Pakisilip naman po ang mga utang ni Villar sa BSP, ang mga utang nila RAMON JACINTO, RONNIE ZAMORA, JOE DE VENECIA at madami pang ibang mga pulitiko. Iilan lamang yan sa mga nababanggit sa balita na may mga malalaking utang sa gobyerno.
hopeless_race : Nagmimistulang "small time" lamang ang malversation of funds kumpara sa laki ng kinakamal ng mga umuutang sa gobyerno. At ito ay malinaw na natatakbuhan dahil hindi nga naman pwede makulong ang may-ari ng kumpanya sa pagkaka-utang lamang. Tunay na mga tuso at magagaling sa batas itong mga politiko natin. Masasabi ko na malamang lahat ng mga politiko ganito ang diskarte...wala pang kulong.
hopeless_race : PCIJ pkitingnan naman po ang mga gaya ni Villar na my malaking utang sa Gobyerno pero tinatakbuhan. Magtatayo ng kumpanya at uutang ng bilyon bilyon sa gobyerno ng walang balak bayaran. Tunay ngang walang nakukulong sa utang...ito ang prinsipyo ginagamit ng mga politiko ntin kaya nakakapagtaka kung san napupunta ang daang bilyong pera ng gobyerno.
hopeless_race : Sana itreat naman po ng media ang hacienda luisita at mendiola massacre na parang MAGUINADANAO MASSACRE. Ipublicized ang mga katotohanan at ipakita sa tao ang karumaldumal na pinaggagawa sa mga farmers dun. Untouchable po ba sila cory at danding at hindi magawang batikusin ng media about these two massacres?
hopeless_race : Kapag napaguusapan ang mendiola at hacienda luisita massacre ay parang walang nangyari at parang hindi big deal. Anu po ba ang pinagkaiba ng dalawang nabanggit na massacre sa maguindanao massacre?
hopeless_race : Its sad that we pinoys are blind to the fact of what had happened in mendiola and hacienda luisita. Ang tanong..bakit ang media ay hindi manlang matackle ang ganitong usapin? Takot ba sila kay cory at danding?
hopeless_race : Wilkins" brand, for P1.4 billion.-1999 Sugarland Multi-Food Corp. for P2.9 billion 2001- Purefoods Corp P7 billion P60 billion Coca-Cola ... See More 2002- Cosmos Bottling Corp. from RFM Corp. for P14.1 billion October 2008- GSIS' shares in Meralco worth PHP30 Billion. December 2008- country's biggest oil refiner, Petron Corporation. international company shopping spree: Australian boutique brewer J. Boag and Son for A$96 million in 2000. $97 million for Thai Amarit Brewery Ltd $35.5 mi
hopeless_race : Gud am..glad to be back.
jr_lad : rip mr. alecks pabico. you'll be greatly missed!
sevens21 : Dati input mo lng name at SSS ID makukuha mo agad STATIC INFO...
sevens21 : tawag ka sa HOTLINE nila walang ANSWER grrr we need pa namn ng static info SSS Gising!!!
sevens21 : Gawa naman po kayo ng article about SSS. Pangit ng site nila dali ma blocked ng account
guest_899 : we must check the background of each potential candidates to avoid having another big mistake like GMA
guest_899 : congratulations to PCIJ, more power and God Bless !
jazzymuver : how did Arroyo swallow that kind of things!! how come that she just spend the money our countrymen for her own sake!!
guest_3664 : i would be glad if u can include the investigation of the manner public officials announce infra projects as per COA regulation. It is frustrating to see their faces on the tarpaulin instead of the prescribed information like name of project, date of implementation,amount of contract, source/s of fund, among other things. This is very rampant here in Marikina. Thanks and more power on your noble endeavors. We need people like you to have make our country great again.
jhanz_08 : im making research on R.A 9136...with rgards to the privatization of NPC..could someone out there can let me understand more bout this matter?why was monopoly dismantled?email me..jhanycem@yahoo.com...thanks much
erika marie : P.S.:) my paper is due next week and i do hope someone could provide me these reports coming from reliable resources thank you ulit.
erika marie : P.S.
guest_4275 : i am currently doing a study regarding political killings in the philippines. could someone out there please send me human rights reports under Aquino and Ramos administration. you could send it at my email: erikamariet@yahoo.com your response would surely be very much appreciated. thank you everyone. god bless.
guest_4275 : i am currently doing a study for my paper regarding political killings in the philippines. i noted that there are no human rights reports during the Aquino and Ramos administration. could someone out there please send me reports regarding these matter? i do hope these reports came from reliable resources you could send it in my email; erikamariet@yahoo.comyour response would surely be appreciated. thanks everyone. god bless.
jayson bourne : gusto ko po maging member ng PCIJ, panu po ba? may application po ba? sana mapadalhan nyo ako ng info sa email ko... www.jboxpenshoppe@yahoo.com
jayson bourne : cory is OK, but kris & Noynoy sensationalize masyado...
guest_9891 : LABAN pa rin!
meow : boycotts worked during marcos years. how about doing it now against the businesses of the con-ass congressmen?
meow : aside from 168, what other establishments can we boycott that belong to the arroyos and their cronies?
Jalenack : Your shoutbox is blank. Add a message!

You must be a registered user to participate in this chat

Of neoconservatives and neoliberals: U.S. foreign policy in post-Bush America

Posted by: Alecks P. Pabico | July 6, 2008 at 11:21 am
Filed under: In the News, Podcasts

THAT the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush is finally coming to an end may be comforting a thought to many in light of elections in the United States to choose a new president this coming November. But the choices of American voters, having since been narrowed down to John McCain, the Republican Party nominee, and Barack Obama, the Democratic Party nominee, are hardly offering the rest of the world much hope in terms of any fundamental change in U.S. foreign policy.

Visiting academic Dr. Jim Glassman makes such an assessment in a series of lectures last week before political science students at the University of the Philippines and civil-society groups at the Focus for the Global South office. Even Obama’s campaign promise of a “Change You Can Believe In” does not evoke much optimism in the associate professor of geography at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Obama, the Democratic frontrunner, has undoubtedly electrified the presidential race, capturing the imagination not only of Americans but also of people around the world as he runs on a campaign platform anchored on change — a conscious attempt to differentiate him from defeated Democratic rival Senator Hillary Clinton and McCain, who is cast as “just plain conservative” likely to continue down the path traversed by Bush in his eight years in the White House.

But Glassman, a leading analyst on U.S. security and foreign policy in East and Southeast Asia, says he sees no basis at all for either candidate, much more Obama, even if he were portraying himself as a radical wanting to change things, to come to power and begin effecting real changes.

Listen to Dr. Glassman’s talk:

Part 1
Length: 00:23:17
Language: English
File size: 21.3 MB

Part 2
Length: 00:20:13
Language: English
File size: 18.5 MB

As he points out, Obama has already indicated in recent weeks that he is going to stay on a “very conservative course,” citing the views recently enunciated by Richard Danzig, the former navy secretary under the Clinton administration who is among Obama’s senior advisers on national security issues.

Danzig had declared that there is little chance that a Democratic administration will cut the budget of the Pentagon and that it is unlikely to spend less on the military in the near term, indicating much the same Bush II administration policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In fact, Obama’s foreign policy group consists of the same Clinton people like Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher, both former secretaries of state, whom University of San Francisco professor Stephen Zunes described as “backers of failed foreign policies based upon contempt for international legal norms and military solutions to complex political problems.”

Moreover, Glassman thinks Obama’s intention to be a candidate for serious change is impaired by the big financial capitalists supporting his candidacy, among them George Soros and William Buffett, the world’s richest man. Glassman is, after all, reminded by investments firm Goldman-Sachs, Bill Clinton’s biggest campaign contributor, which got repaid by way of an appointment of its former managing director, Robert Rubin, as secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Two polar blocs

“Heads of state cannot just jump outside the bounds of this whole structured system,” says Glassman, referring to the configuration of power between two competing political-economic blocs that have alternately held the reins of government in the U.S. and, by unwritten decree, the world. Divided along neoliberal and neoconservative lines, the two political blocs represent distinct, competitive interests but which are symbiotically linked to each other by one ultimate agenda: preserving American hegemony.

Glassman describes the two U.S. capitalist class fractions as follows:

Neoliberals represent the interests of highly internationalized and relatively cosmopolitan capitalist elites centered in high-tech, capital-intensive industries (i.e., financing firms and transnational corporations). They are driven by a pro-corporate globalization agenda and have a strong constituency in the Democratic Party.

Neoconservatives, on the other hand, are represented by military capitalists, statist industrialists, and those with interests in highly domestic, low-tech, labor-intensive industries. Their favored form of U.S. imperialism relies on the state repressive apparatus (i.e, military force) to enforce the property rights of the military-industrial elites.

Much of the Bush II administration’s persona derives from the dominance of neoconservative ideology associated with a small group of policy intellectuals that included Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, erstwhile members of the Democratic Party who switched allegiance to the Republican Party at the time of the Cold War.

The migration brought with it a strong right-wing Zionist orientation previously unheard of in the Republican Party. Historically, unconditional support for Israel had come from the ranks of Democrats.

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, saw its institutional alliance with organized labor impaired by the breaking of the labor accord forged in the 1930s during the era of the New Deal under Franklin D. Roosevelt. The restructuring of the U.S. economy in the late 1960s led to the process of corporate downsizing that weakened labor organizations. Glassman says that by shedding its commitments to organized labor in favor of TNCs, the Democratic Party had started veering to the right.

Strong continuities

Despite such stark transformations, Glassman notes the very strong continuities between today’s political blocs and those that were formed in the 1930s and which endured during the Cold War era. The reconfiguration of the two major parties in the U.S. in the context of the Great Depression revolved around two overlapping but fairly distinctive political-economic blocs that historical political economists at the time referred to as “liberal internationalists” and “conservative nationalists.”

See also Glasssman’s paper: “The new imperialism? On continuity and change in U.S. foreign policy“

“You can reproduce the list of characteristics (of the two blocs) today with very little, if any, alteration. It would be a very good description of the blocs that are still reigning in the U.S. system — what you now call neoliberal and neoconservative,” he says.

In providing a paradigm that he says is “foundational to understanding not only U.S. foreign policy but also its domestic politics,” Glassman derives from the works of political scientist Thomas Ferguson and historian Bruce Cumings. From his analysis of the political party realignment, Ferguson identified the political blocs — liberal internationalists and conservative nationalists — and their core constituencies that came to power in the 1930s.

Cumings, for his part, observed how liberal internationalists, practically today’s neoliberals, and conservative nationalists, the equivalent of today’s neoconservatives, were distinguished by their foreign-policy approaches during the Cold War. The latter took to the “rollback” policy of direct military challenge to the Soviet Union; the former to “internationalism,” or the indirect undermining of Soviet power through capitalist expansion. The third policy option of “containment” presented a compromise position in the tug-of-war between groups advocating for the two polar positions.

As outlined by Cumings, the internationalism and rollback policies, says Glassman, were characterized by the following elements:

INTERNATIONALISM	ROLLBACK
METAPHOR
The Open Door	Positive Action
ECONOMIC CONTENT
Nonterritorial imperialism, a regulated open door, a world economy made safe for free trade, an absence of obstacles (i.e., protectionism) A bloc of high-tech, competitive industries as the engine of expansion	Classic, not Wilsonian, imperialism, territorial instead of non-territorial, resting on expansion by agglomeration and direct controls rather than indirect, economic levers Exclusive grasp of raw materials and markets (because of inability to compete in world markets) Opposition to competition from revived Japan and Germany
POLITICAL CONTENT
A world under regulated law (the United Nations) Practical U.S. dominance assured through proxy-voting allies and clients in the UN and elsewhere	Opposition to the UN and collective security Anticommunism by whatever necessary means Support for reaction everywhere
STRATEGIC CONTENT
The United States looks after the whole, the allies the parts Joint world policing High-technology and maneuverable Navy, Air Force, and atomic capabilities more important than exclusive control of territories and military bases	Asia-first, not Europe-first Away from old-world, immoral diplomacy Towards new-world, moral imperialism Exclusive control of territories and bases as means and not endsHatred of taxes and communists leads to fascination with cheap, high-technology weaponry for obliterating the enemy, thus desire to use the atomic bomb and the Air Force, or another panacea like “Star Wars.” Allies dominated and if recalcitrant, abandoned for fortress America
IDEOLOGICAL CONTENT
Classic Wilsonian idealism, masquerading as universalism Human rights and democratization Free trade as the (regulated) hidden hand that would bring progress everywhere and liberalize both transnational intercourse and domestic political and social structures	Rampant American nationalism, chauvinism with high (if specifically American) moral content Eruptive anticommunism Loathing of unions Frontier expansionism and Indian Wars as models Idealist rhetoric, but a non-Wilsonian idealism resting on entrepreneurial virtues and a restless search for new ventures, markets, and raw materials Friedrich List or Adam Smith as ideologues, depending on market position
ROLE OF THE STATE
The executive predominates within the state, at the expense of vested interests in the State Department and the military branches Liberalization of target authoritarian states abroad	Strong military departments but weak regulation of the economy A heroic executive, a gutted State Department Strong FBI and covert action capability War capitalism is necessary, vast reinforcement of military branches in the meantime (often as a way to pork barrel for local constituencies). Neomercantilist in its conception of relations between states, but hostile to state interventions in markets at home
SOCIAL CONSTITUENCY
Eastern bankers High-technology industries that can compete in the world market Pro-British ethnic groups and regions Liberal Democrats Navy and Air Force (depending on budgets) Intellectuals	Declining national-market firms Labor-sensitive industries, especially textiles Independent oil companies Republican Party right-wing, especially Western and Sun Belt constituencies resentful of Eastern establishment dominance, Rockefeller wing, and Eastern banks that control provision and credit Fundamentalist religious groupings that hate liberal theology or liberals

In the post-Cold War era, neoliberals and neoconservatives have continued their antagonistic jockeying for power, with the neoconservative bloc clearly gaining the upperhand under the Bush II administration. That is not to say though that neoliberalism has not been ascendant. Glassman points to transnational statist institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), which has been able to undercut national state regulatory functions as a way of regulating the global economy.

But the relationship, reminds Glassman, have also been defined by overlapping, symbiotic interests. Neoliberals, he explains, also need military enforcement of property relations and structural adjustment policies while neoconservatives need global markets and investments by financial capitalists.

The China threat and renewed interest in Southeast Asia

While the two blocs may have conflicting foreign-policy approaches with respect to Northeast Asia, particularly China (neoliberals favor engaging China, neoconservatives favor containing China), such tensions have helped shape U.S. policies toward the region, resulting in a renewed interest in Southeast Asia.

“Geo-strategic thinking even before 9/11 (the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S.) already pointed to the threat from China, not Islamic terrorists,” says Glassman.

The increased presence of American forces in Southeast Asia is therefore only a consequence of the region being made central to the U.S.’s enduring security interests as laid out in the September 2000 report of The Project for a New American Century, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century,” the neoconservative blueprint for the establishment of an American global hegemony. The paper called for “control of the (region’s) key sea lines of communication, ensuring access to rapidly growing economies, maintaining regional stability while fostering closer ties to fledgling democracies, and…supporting the nascent trends towards political liberty…”

“No U.S. strategy,” the paper said, “can constrain a Chinese challenge to American regional leadership if our security guarantees to Southeast Asia are intermittent and US military presence a periodic affair.”

The neoliberal design, says Glassman, is no different. The July 2001 Council for Foreign Relations-commissioned report, “The United States and Southeast Asia: A Policy Agenda for the New Administration,” assigned the highest American priority to “maintaining regional security through the prevention of intraregional conflict and domination by an outside power or coalition” while promoting market-oriented economic reform in the region at the same time.

For these reasons, Glassman thinks that regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections, the U.S. will continue to stay the course in the Philippines, which only means a strong military presence premised on the maximum use of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and other basing arrangements.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 and is filed under In the News, Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 people have left comments

The post says:

“But the choices of American voters, having since been narrowed down to John McCain, the Republican Party nominee, and Barrack Obama, the Democratic Party nominee, are hardly offering the rest of the world much hope in terms of any fundamental change in U.S. foreign policy.”

I’d like to believe that any country in the world is run by an elite power broker that dictates what her policy would be. America is one of such nations. Leaders are chosen by these elite power brokers and are held captives by these groups when they assume power. The policy directions are geared toward business interest of these power brokers camouflage as the interest of America as a nation.

The policy directions and principles behind the WTO is for big countries to be able demolish the protectionist policies imposed by smaller countries so big business can avail of the cheap materials and labor of the third world. You cannot dissociate politics from business in fact politics is a business in itself.

The dynamo that propelled the WTO charter is purely a business proposition which in order to make it happen has to be brought into the political arena and implement this policy through the representatives of big sovereign nations.

The presence of America in smaller regions is to protect WTO’s objectives sugarcoated, to bring democracy into the world.

But despite her neocolonialist spirit imperial design, America remains the leader of the world, and despite her faults and shortcomings of not being able to effect a policy change to address the hope of smaller nations, she does not propositions totalitarianism as a way of doing business. Between being the satellite of China or Russia, Filipinos would be better off as a satellite of the US.

In the present world order, sovereignty is a myth and nationalism is a disease. We have to accept the fact that we need other nations to survive.

jcc wrote on July 7, 2008 - 9:19 pm | Visit Link

I believe that the person who will be next U.S. President is the one who can mount a successful campaign addressing the Economics woes of the Americans Now. U.S. foreign Policies will depend on U.S. National Interests and it is above Personalities and even Political Ideologies or Parties. If we observed closely even Pres. Clinton was not against the Wars that the Bush Administration had waged, he could have launched that Afghan Invasion had he not been distracted by the Lewinsky affair.

naykika wrote on July 9, 2008 - 9:44 pm | Visit Link

In the light of the 911 incident, Americans do not distate wars. You can see persistent opposition to wars engaged in by America in other regions of the world, but this could be a minority group that looks like a majority voice because the mainstream media had been giving them ample coverage.

And even if majority of the Americans are against the wars in Afghan and Iraq, the political decision to go to war is not in the hands of the Americans, it is in the hands of the President whom as I said earlier is hold captive by the power brokers in Washington. Engaging in wars means more war materials and more profits for the war industry, add also the money that is being pumped into the homes of soldiers who get bonus for enlisting and of being allowed to go to college financed by the Army when you are done with your tour of duty.

Americans love war heroes… especially those deployed in Afgan in Iraq because they were prosecuting a just war to stop repeat performance of incidents in the magnitude of 911.

Even if Obama is elected President, he could not reverse the war mania in the American culture, otherwise, the war apparatus might decide for an extra-political process of electing another president in the person of the vice president. Remember JFK?

jcc wrote on July 10, 2008 - 7:06 am | Visit Link

The two opposing political blocs, as Dr. Glassman says, differ in their favored forms of U.S. imperialism. That is not to say though that the Democrats have not been less of a militarist than Republicans. Democrat presidents were responsible for the wars in Korea (Harry Truman), Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia (John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson), and the escalation of conflicts in Iran, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and Nicaragua (Jimmy Carter).

The Clinton administration’s “humanitarian intervention” in the Balkans left thousands dead and over one million people displaced in the 1990s. While he did not wage a “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq, Clinton imposed an economic embargo that led to the deaths of half a million children — a death toll greater than Hiroshima’s but which his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, justified thus: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

Alecks P. Pabico wrote on July 13, 2008 - 11:44 am | Visit Link

Here is America’s foreign policy snippet towards the third world.

“A world where some live in comfort and plenty, while half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day, is neither just nor stable. Including all of the world’s poor in an expanding circle of development—and opportunity—is a moral imperative and one of the top priorities of U.S. international policy”.

“Decades of massive development assistance have failed to spur economic growth in the poorest countries. Worse, development aid has often served to prop up failed policies, relieving the pressure for reform and perpetuating misery. Results of aid are typically measured in dollars spent by donors, not in the rates of growth and poverty reduction achieved by recipients. These are the indicators of a failed strategy”.

If the US is sincere in trying to relieve third world countries from their miseries, all she has to do is to influence IMF and World Bank to condone the “foreign debts” of these nations so these nations can have a fresh start. Or rich nations can show their compassion towards poor nations by “writing off their” obligations.

How about that? Or We can start “MAID”. “Movement for the Abolition of International Debts”. Let us have Gabriela to head the movement.

jcc wrote on July 14, 2008 - 5:13 am | Visit Link