The Business of America

If it is true that the “business of America is business,” then is it altogether unrealistic to wonder whether the business of American foreign policy of might not also be business? Though garnished with neologistic flourishes intended to convey a sense of freshness or originality, the politicoeconomic concept to which the US government adheres today has not changed in a century: the familiar quest for an “open world,” the overriding imperative of commercial integration, confidence that technology endows the US with a privileged position in that order, and the expectation that American military might will preserve order and enforce the rules. These policies reflect a single-minded determination to extend and perpetuate American political, economic, and cultural hegemony – usually referred to as “leadership” – on a global scale.

Every imperial project – in fact, virtually every public undertaking of every modern state is accompanied by declarations of benevolent intention, more or less frequent and elaborate according to the scale of the undertaking and the degree of public skepticism in is value that is anticipated. These declarations have no evidentiary value at all. They are merely part of the manufacture of consent in democratic and even in non-democratic societies. For example: it might have been difficult to gain popular support for military intereventions in Central America by insisting on the necessity of preserving a favorable investment climate for large corporations; or to sell the invasion of Iraq by announcing a determination to control the world’s energy resources. As any public-relations executive or media consultant wold have pointed out, the product in both cases needed “packaging.” Fear of Communism, revenge for 9/11, or appeals to popular generosity with fables about bringing “freedom and democracy” to those less fortunate – these worked much better at whipping up public support for policies that ensured the economic gains anticipated.

For the real purposes of US foreign policy, now and historically, “democracy” means the freedom to vote for candidates who can be counted on to allow unrestricted American capital flows; American ownership of vital resources; privatization and control by American corporations of water, health, utility, and banking systems; the opening of domestic markets to cheap (usually subsidized) foreign imports by American corporations; the repeal or lax enforcement of environmental, worker-safety, public-health, and minimum-wage laws; an American investor friendly tax code; drastic reductions in social-welfare spending by the local state; the suppression of union, labor, or peasant activism; and, upon request, providing facilities for US military forces.

Today multinational American businesses and banks pin their hopes for future profits on export markets abroad – and salivate at the thought of transferring industrial production and even routine service jobs to low-wage workers without trade unions or civil rights in Third World countries. A new free-trade coalition allies American based multinational industry and finance with export-oriented agriculture in the South and West against industrial workers in the Midwestern industrial heartland of the country. This low-wage, low-tax, low-public-service economy is a shift of historic proportions that has the potential to destroy the twentieth-century achievement of middle-class living standards for a majority of Americans. It also will prevent the vast majority of Third World citizens from ever achieving middle-class living standards.

Why do you stand by meekly and let it happen?

[I am grateful to Michael Lind, Andrew Bocevich, and George Scialabra for their words, thoughts, and inspiration for this entry.]