People's Democracy

Vijay Prashad

AFTER a long and overwrought period, the US election of 2000 is finally over. By all indications, George W Bush of the Republican Party was handed over the victory by a Supreme Court whose majority sits to the right. Al Gore of the Democratic Party won the popular vote by a reasonable margin, but he lost in the Electoral College (EC). The EC is an arcane institution devised in the early years of the republic by a landed oligarchy that was too timorous to renege on their egalitarian hopes, but yet too apprehensive of the will of the masses. The popular vote does not elect the leader of the United States; it is the will of an undemocratic EC that decrees who is to be the president.

The Democratic Party contested the election results for Florida, alleging that local officials produced unreasonably complicated ballot papers and that Republican stalwarts turned back African-Americans (who voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats) from the polls. An ambushed electorate found the apparatus of the state turn against their choice and nominate George W Bush as US president from 2001 to 2004. The US pretension about democracy was hoisted on its own petard.

After a gory battle, the ruler hires an artist to portray the accession to power. The blood and guts are removed from the canvas as the artist gives us a story of installation embedded in a divine or heroic myth. George W Bush, son of former president and CIA director George H Bush, will be inaugurated president on January 20, 2001, but already the bourgeois media manipulates history to give this pretender a vast mandate. The Democratic Party, well-schooled in the ways of the plutocracy, calls for bipartisanship or, in other words, the maintenance of the facade of democracy even though this is surely a judicial coup d’etat.

Elections outside the US are always greeted by the US media as something of a sham, but its own elections are given a clean chit. That Jeb Bush, brother of George, was governor of Florida and that several of the judicial appointments came from Bush’s father did not deter the self-righteousness of the US establishment. ‘Democracy,’ the handle of Pax Americana, must emerge unscathed from this fracas or, else, the hordes outside the gates may start to wonder about the ‘Community of Democracy’ and other such prattle.

Well before the final result was declared, it became clear that not only was Bush to win, but that George the Second would choose to surround himself by his father’s men, all of a decidedly business-military cast. George the Second brought back the team assembled by George the First for the Gulf war (1990-91). Dick Cheney (then the secretary of defence) has returned as vice president and principal actor in this administration, while General Colin Powell (then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) reprises as secretary of state.

Those who will tend to domestic policy all come from the right: John Ashcroft (a vicious conservative who lost to a dead man in a race for senator of Missouri) as attorney general, Tommy Thompson (whose governorship in Wisconsin is well-known as vindictive toward the poor) as secretary of health and human services, Paul O’Neill (Ford administration veteran and aluminum giant Alcoa’s chief executive) as secretary of the treasury, and Gale Norton (a well-known conservative) as secretary of the interior. On the domestic side of things, the pro-big business tenor of the cabinet is clear, and sinister. The foreign policy side is even more monstrous.

The troika that will lead the US in the early years of the new millennium comprise: Colin Powell (state), Donald H Rumsfeld (defence) and Condolezza Rice (national security advisor). Powell comes to his job from the military. For the past three decades, Powell has been its loyal son. In Vietnam he helped cover up the Mai Lai massacre of March 1968 (when the American division slaughtered 300 civilians). On Ronald Reagan’s national security team in the 1980s he was, in his own 1995 words, "the chief administration advocate" for the brutal contras and was the pointman during the Iran-Contra deal. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell was responsible for the 1989 US invasion of Panama, in which at least 300 civilians died while thousands were injured and displaced. Of the Powell doctrine that guided the invasion, the general wrote that "use all the force necessary and do not apologise for going in big if that’s what it takes." Powell used his own advice in the Gulf war when he guided the massive bombardment of Iraq and then engineered the embargo that is ongoing. So much for the man in the state department.

Alongside Powell will sit Condolezza Rice who was in the National Security Council of George the First. Rice was till recently professor of political science at Stanford and a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institute. Like most of the cabinet, Rice has her hands in the business world as a board member of oil giant Chevron and an advisor to financial conglomerate J P Morgan.

Rumsfeld returns as head of defence, a post he held during the Ford administration. Before his return to government, Rumsfeld was a senior executive at a pharmaceutical company (G D Searle) and two high-tech firms. Of interest, however, is Rumsfeld’s post in 1998. Clinton selected him to head up the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. After a month of meetings, the commission reported that the US could be met with a grave missile threat from either North Korea or Iran. In light of this, the commission recommended that the US military consider various approaches to counter this perceived threat, one of which is the National Missile Defence system. But the Rumsfeld commission even suggested that this system was not enough, and that the US military should develop boost-phase defence networks, to intercept a missile in the first few minutes of flight. This would mean that the US military would need to create more bases around Asia, as well as to position intercept missiles on military cargo ships or on commercial floating oil drilling platforms. Rumsfeld at defence is going to be vigorous in his promotion of further US military domination of the world.

Rumsfeld will be cheered on by Dick Cheney, vice president and a Rumsfeld crony from the Ford days. Cheney returns to power after a stint as an oil executive and, eager to strengthen the US military, to give it more than the current outlay of 51 per cent of the discretionary budget of the US.

In ordinary times, intimations of a stronger US military would be received with distress in New Delhi. But these are not ordinary times. From the early 1990s, the US government and military find that India could be a potential ally in its encirclement of China and in its operations to secure the oil in Central and West Asia. Position papers from the various governmental and military thinktanks are quite clear on this point. National security advisor Rice predicts that "India will emerge as an important economic and political power" and Powell noted in 1998 that "I think India is a land with enormous potential."

Lest we are misled by such amiable statements, we should recognise that they mean that India is of "enormous potential" for the strategic aims of the US. George the Second will hope to make India the Israel of South Asia, a surrogate of US imperialism, in exchange for a few small tokens of prestige. Vajpayee’s romance with Clinton was not really about the Democrats, but more pointedly about the Hindu right wing’s attempt to reconfigure Indian foreign policy in line with that of the United States, with the US playing the lead. "We should increasingly see India as a regional partner and a major power in that part of the world," explained Powell.

The US will thus be the primus inter pares while India will be its major domo in the South Asian sector. National security advisor Rice recently told the Indian-American media that George the Second will not support India for a seat on the UN Security Council, but "I think that there will be plenty of other opportunities that crop up." In other words, India cannot hope to be in the first circle of imperialism, but it can be sure to receive exemplary marching order to do something to please the master.

Despite its own shaky origins, the cabinet of George the Second is already more aggressive then its predecessor. US imperialism under Clinton did not come covered in a velvet glove, as can be witnessed in his ruthless bombardment of Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia as well as in his economic war on most of the planet, especially Mexico and Africa. But the cabinet of George the Second gives off the stench of the iron fist, especially as it tries to butter up the willing, and servile, allies such as the BJP-led coalition. George the Second promises to back off on the nuclear question and Kashmir if India pledges itself to support US initatives against China and the states in the oil regions; the US will not ensure India a place on the Security Council, but it will welcome India into the world of Pax Americana. There will be more talk of "toughness" and "military resolve" and there will be more attempts to erect bases and military satellites. The fights against this in the US are already in motion, as activists gather at Washington DC to protest the inauguration of George the Second. These are the dark days.