The Bush Agenda

Invading the World, One Economy at a Time

Antonia Juhasz

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061977619
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Trade & Tariffs
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In The Bush Agenda, Antonia Juhasz exposes a radical corporate globalization agenda that has been refined by leading members and allies of the Bush administration over decades and reached its fullest, most aggressive implementation under George W. Bush—and Bush Agenda adherents plan for it to outlast him.

Juhasz uncovers the history and key role of U.S. corporations in the creation of this agenda—focusing on Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Chevron, and Halliburton—then presents the Iraq War as its most brutal application to date. Expertly revealing the oil timeline driving the war, Juhasz charts exactly how the administration has fundamentally transformed Iraq's economy, locked in sweeping advantages to its corporate allies, and expanded its target to the whole Middle East. The results of these same corporate globalization policies—dislocation, extreme poverty, and increased violence and terrorism—have been demonstrated in regions from South America to Africa to the Middle East and Asia, and in the United States.

Extensively researched and now updated with a new afterword, The Bush Agenda is a brilliant, informative analysis, revealing the hard truths about where the Bush administration and its corporate allies are leading the modern world—and what we can do about it.

ONE

THE BUSH AGENDA

An uncharacteristically somber George Walker Bush approached the podium of the Great Hall of the United Nations on September 14, 2005. As the president stood in midtown Manhattan to address the gathered members of the General Assembly, much of the U.S. Gulf Coast lay buried beneath a sea of water, mud, waste, sand, and debris. Two days before, the bodies of forty-five people had been discovered in a flooded New Orleans hospital, adding to a death toll that already exceeded a thousand. Over one million people were without homes, including tens of thousands just recently released from the New Orleans Convention Center and Superdome, where they were forced to stay for almost a week without food, water, or electricity while outdoor temperatures exceeded a sweltering 100 degrees.

The president selected the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations (UN) for his first speech before the international community in the wake of the storm. It was a fitting choice given that the 2005 UN Summit was dedicated to the global eradication of poverty. The storm had forced the world’s wealthiest nation to take notice of the destitution in its own midst when Katrina struck an area where more than one million people, or nearly one-fifth of the population, lived in poverty. Katrina’s $200 billion price tag was rising, earning the storm the dubious distinction as the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. In response, 115 nations (including Rwanda and Ethiopia, two of the poorest countries in the world), all of whom were represented at the UN Summit, donated money or other forms of assistance to the United States in its hour of need.

This would be President George W. Bush’s fifth address before the UN General Assembly. Two months after September 11, 2001, he established an annual tradition of addressing the Assembly within days of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks and just miles from ground zero. The president has used each speech to put forward his international agenda squarely within the context of 9/11. It was with these speeches that Bush made the case for war beyond Afghanistan, into Iraq, and against all states that harbor terrorists; he laid out the criteria for those who are “with” versus those who are “against us” as he built a “coalition of the willing”; and he affirmed his commitment to expanded international trade policies in the name of fighting terrorism and spreading freedom.

To those who watched the president’s previous UN addresses, it was clear that in September 2005, recent events were weighing heavily on him. On the same day that bodies were found in the flooded New Orleans hospital, the president’s leading federal official for emergency management, Michael D. Brown, was forced to resign amid widespread criticism of the administration’s failure to prepare for the highly anticipated arrival of Hurricane Katrina and to adequately respond to its aftermath. Though the president spoke of directing federal funds to the local communities affected by Katrina, it had only recently been revealed that companies such as Halliburton and Bechtel, located in Texas and California respectively, with intimate connections to his administration were receiving multimillion-dollar reconstruction contracts while local companies were shut out. The president personally faced growing charges of political and corporate cronyism, mismanagement, and even racism in his response to the storm, contributing to the lowest job approval ratings (41 percent) of his presidency at the time, and the feeling expressed by a majority of Americans polled that the president was not to be trusted in a time of crisis. Potentially even more distressing to Bush were the nearly two-thirds of Americans who no longer approved of the way he was handling the central pillar of his presidency—the Iraq war—and the majority who wanted U.S. troops immediately withdrawn.¹

The president, visibly tired, spent much of the speech looking down at his notes. His familiar easy swagger, comfortable grin, and animated gestures were all but missing. True to form, however, he made no alteration to his message. Bush spent a mere ninety-five seconds of the twenty-five-minute speech discussing the hurricane. He noted the devastation, thanked the gathered nations for their support, and moved on. Then, as he had done every year for the previous four years, the president devoted the bulk of his address to just two topics. The first, not surprisingly, was the war on terror, including the war in Iraq. The second was the expansion of free trade. Once again, Bush offered these two policies, war and free trade, as twin solutions to virtually all of the world’s problems—from global poverty to international health crises, including AIDS, malaria, and the Avian flu—and as the means to achieving a better world.

The president described the benefits of war and his administration’s commitment to it by assuring his listeners that “all of us will live in a safer world” if we stay the course in Iraq and complete the war effort. The United States and all “civilized nations” would “continue to take the fight to the terrorists” and “defeat the terrorists on the battlefield.” As for free trade, Bush explained that the United States would also defeat the terrorists by fighting poverty and “the surest path to greater wealth is greater trade…. By expanding trade, we spread hope and opportunity to the corners of the world, and we strike a blow against the terrorists…. Our agenda for freer trade is part of our agenda for a freer world.”

The agenda has been refined by President Bush and leading members and allies of his administration over decades, dating back most notably to the administration of his father, George Herbert Walker Bush. Its leading framers include men who served in the administrations of both father and son, such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, Robert Zoellick, and Scooter Libby. Decades of joint writing, refining, and advocating for a set of clear economic and military principles reached its fullest articulation and most aggressive implementation under the administration of George W. Bush—what I call “The Bush Agenda.” This agenda predates the current president, however, and its advocates certainly hope it will outlast him.

Within the Bush Agenda, “freer trade for a freer world” refers to specific economic policies designed especially to support key U.S. multinational corporations that are used as veritable weapons of war, both in the war on terror and in the administration’s broader struggle to spread its vision of a freer and safer world. Often, these economic policies are applied in tandem with America’s military forces, as was the case in the March 2003 invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq. To date, the Iraq War represents the fullest and most relentless application of the Bush Agenda. The “freer and safer world” envisioned by Bush and his administration is ultimately one of an ever-expanding American empire driven forward by the growing powers of the nation’s largest multinational corporations and unrivaled military.

Free trade is shorthand for a number of economic policies that expand the rights of multinational corporations and investors to operate in more locations, under fewer regulations, with less commitment to any specific location. Advocates contend that these companies and individuals, freed of burdensome government regulations, will amass great wealth and become engines of economic growth. Their wealth, in turn, will filter down through the economy, enriching even the very poorest members. One common image offered to depict the benefits of free trade is of a rising tide of wealth lifting all boats in its wake.

Critics, including myself, refer to the same policies as corporate globalization, pointing out that while they do generate vast wealth for certain multinational corporations and investors, those benefits rarely spread throughout a society. Instead, governments are restricted from using policies proven to benefit small local business, workers, consumers, or the environment, while being required to expand policies that benefit multinational corporations. The result is increased economic inequality both within and between nations, and greater economic and political insecurity, including job loss, poverty, and even disease. While the policies free multinational corporations from government regulation, they cost the rest of society a vast amount of economic and social security.

For example, in September 2005, the World Health Organization warned that a new free trade agreement being negotiated by the United States and the Andean nations of Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, and Venezuela could increase the price of medicines by 200 percent in these Andean countries.² The U.S.–Andean Free Trade Agreement would require the countries to implement intellectual property rules already in effect in the United States and favored by global pharmaceutical companies that restrict government regulations supporting the local manufacture of generic medicines—the same medicines used to cure or alleviate the diseases cited by President Bush in his UN speech, including HIV, AIDS, and malaria. The report warned that the price increase could either make the medicines inaccessible to those in need or force those who pay into poverty.

One year prior to the September 11 attacks, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency predicted increased religious extremism and violence as a result of increasing global inequality, warning that “the rising tide of the global economy will create many economic winners, but it will not lift all boats…. [It will] spawn conflicts at home and abroad, ensuring an even wider gap between regional winners and losers than exists today…. Regions, countries, and groups feeling left behind will face deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation. They will foster political, ethnic, ideological, and religious extremism, along with the violence that often accompanies it” (emphasis added).³

The specific free trade policies advanced by the Bush administration are not new. Their modern roots trace to the end of World War II and the founding of the now dominant global financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. They have been the preferred international economic tools of U.S. presidents for decades, especially over the last thirty-five years and in response to the growth of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its attempts to control the global oil economy. The key difference between Bush and his recent predecessors is that Bush has directly aligned economic might with military force and has applied both with a more radical, unilateral, and audacious approach. As a result, the Bush Agenda has generated the greatest level of violent opposition to the United States and its allies in recent history and made the world a far more dangerous place. If the Bush Agenda is allowed to stay its course, the poverty, inequality, hostility, and violence it generates will intensify and grow.

Of course, the Bush Agenda does have supporters, especially corporate allies that have both shaped and benefited from the administration’s economic and military policies. Many of those allies are found in the energy sector, while many from the energy sector are found in the Bush administration. In the 2000 election cycle, the oil and gas industry donated over thirteen times more money to the Bush/Cheney campaign than to its challenger—nearly $2 million versus just over $140,000. In 2004, the industry gave more than nine times more to Bush/Cheney.⁴ The Bush administration itself represents the first time in history that the president, vice president, and secretary of state are all former energy company officials. In fact, the only other U.S. president to come from the oil and gas industry was Bush’s father.

The Bush years have been a record-breaking bonanza for the oil industry. The twenty-nine major oil and gas firms in the United States earned $43 billion in profits in 2003 and $68 billion in 2004. Oil profits were so high in 2005, that the top three companies alone (ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Conoco Phillips) earned nearly $64 billion between them, more than half of which went to Texas-based ExxonMobil, which recorded the single most profitable year of any corporation in world history in both 2004 and 2005.⁵

Companies such as Halliburton and Chevron, which respectively count the vice president and secretary of state as former officials, are key allies to the Bush Agenda. The Bechtel Corporation, the largest engineering company in the world, with extensive work in the oil and gas field, has exercised influence over the Bush Agenda through its current and past executives, including current board member and former company president, George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state. Lockheed Martin, the country’s largest military contractor and the world’s largest arms exporter, has also played a lead role, with no fewer than sixteen current and past company officials having held positions within the Bush administration.

The George W. Bush years have been remarkably rewarding for each of these companies, particularly in the post-Iraq invasion period. Indeed, each company has a long history in Iraq, played a lead through company executives past and present in advocating for war against Iraq in 2003, and has since profited greatly from that war. Chevron had its most profitable year in its 125-year history in 2004, earning $13.3 billion—nearly double its profits from the year before. The record did not last long, however, as 2005 brought more than $14 billion in profits. Bechtel’s revenue increased from $11.6 billion in 2002 to $16.3 billion in 2003, to $17.4 billion in 2004. Halliburton’s stock price has nearly quadrupled in value from March 2003 to January 2006, while Lockheed’s stocks more than tripled from early 2000 to January 2006. Vice President Cheney is a stockholder in both Halliburton and Lockheed.

The past twenty-five years of U.S. economic engagement with Iraq, culminating in the 2003 invasion and the ongoing occupation, provide the most glaring example of the Bush Agenda and its imperial ambitions. President Ronald Reagan, and to an even greater extent President George H.W. Bush, focused U.S. economic policy toward Iraq on an increasingly intimate and profitable economic engagement. President George W. Bush has gone farther, and in so doing, revealed his imperial aims, by seeking and largely achieving economic control over and within Iraq’s economy. The Bush administration used the military invasion of Iraq to oust its leader, replace its government, implement new economic, political, and oil laws, and write a new constitution. Through the ongoing U.S. military occupation, the Bush administration seeks to ensure that both the new government and the new economic structure stay firmly in place.

The new economic laws have fundamentally transformed Iraq’s economy, applying some of the most radical, sought-after corporate globalization policies in the world and overturning existing laws on trade, public services, banking, taxes, agriculture, investment, foreign ownership, media, and oil, among others. The new laws lock in sweeping advantages to U.S. corporations, including greater U.S. access to, and corporate control of, Iraq’s oil. And the benefits have already begun to flow. Between 2003 and 2004 alone, the value of U.S. imports of Iraqi oil increased by 86 percent and then increased again in the first three quarters of 2005.⁶

Thus, advocates of the Bush Agenda have succeeded in spreading corporate globalization policy to Iraq—securing both short-and long-term profits for U.S. corporations—and establishing an Iraqi government that is more favorable than the last ten years of Saddam Hussein’s regime to the continued advancement of the agenda. But Iraq is only the beginning.

With the encouragement of Bechtel, Chevron, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, and others, the Bush administration has begun to expand its agenda to countries across the Middle East with the U.S.–Middle East Free Trade Area. Insulated by oil revenues, the countries of the Middle East have been largely immune from the need to sign free trade agreements. With the invasion and occupation of Iraq, however, the Bush administration has demonstrated the lengths to which it will go to fulfill its interests. Worried about “regime change” spreading to their countries, an unprecedented number of Middle Eastern governments are participating in these free trade negotiations, which are progressing rapidly.

President Bush reaffirmed his commitment to expanding free trade policy in his 2005 UN address. Much of the speech was in fact devoted to the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Hong Kong three months later. The president argued “the lives and futures of millions of the world’s poorest citizens hang in the balance—and so we must bring the [WTO] trade talks to a successful conclusion.” Founded in 1995, the WTO has 148 member governments and is the most powerful global institution writing and enforcing the rules of corporate globalization. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the WTO administers agreements on issues as broad and far-reaching as agriculture, telecommunications, government procurement, and services on behalf of its members. It provides a forum for expanding these agreements and negotiating new ones. The WTO monitors the internal laws of its members, arbitrates disputes between governments over its rules, and enforces its rulings through the imposition of sanctions. Every two years, the WTO holds ministerial level meetings at which high-ranking government officials finalize negotiations on existing and newly proposed WTO rules.

Before the WTO, multination trade rules dealt largely with the movement of goods between countries, primarily tariffs, which are taxes applied to goods as they enter or exit a country, and quotas, which dictate the number of a specific product that can enter or leave a country. While the WTO continued to regulate these aspects of trade, it went further, moving inside of countries and regulating their internal laws. Every law or government policy that has the potential, whether intended or not, to impact foreign companies or investors is open to WTO regulation.

Because of its unprecedented reach, the WTO has generated some of the most vigorous opposition of any global institution. Millions of people the world-over claim to be victims of “economic violence” brought on their lives by WTO policies in the form of inequality, insecurity, dislocation, and poverty. As described by the CIA earlier, economic violence can breed physical violence just as readily as military force, but the cause and effect are often more difficult to discern. Sometimes, however, the causal link is made painfully clear. Such was the case when Lee Kyung Hae committed suicide in protest of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Afterword
• Notes
• Searchable Terms
• About the Author
• Praise
• Copyright
• About the Publisher