------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 24, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
DEMISE OF BUSH DOCTRINE AND THE REAGAN MYTH
By Fred Goldstein
The extraordinary campaign to lionize former President Ronald Reagan has been an insult to the workers and the oppressed of the world. Reagan was their arch-enemy. The bourgeois media have been basking in the reputation they themselves created for him as a leader. While differing in their views of Reagan's politics, the entire establishment has united in trying to make him a hero.
They tout the lie that "he made us feel good." In fact, he brought misery and suffering to tens of millions the world over. Those who not only "felt good" but made out like bandits under Reagan were the rich, predatory ruling class--the beneficiaries of his huge tax cuts, income transfers from social services to corporations, $2 trillion in military spending, union busting and overseas plunder.
Right now the ruling class desperately needs a hero. George W. Bush's image is tarnished since he dragged U.S. imperialism into the quagmire of Iraq--a quagmire that deepens every day.
Reagan was a right-wing ideologue. Bush is a mediocre, provincial, backslapping bourgeois politician--the son of a political/corporate dynasty, who has been the willing captive of a group of right-wing ideologues now called "neoconservatives."
While moderate and right-wing commentators bicker over Reagan's role, Bush has been trying to latch onto the right-wing legacy of militarism and political reaction that was the hallmark of the Reagan administration.
The Bush doctrine of absolute world domination through preemptive warfare and nuclear terror--as enunciated in the 2001 National Security Strategy document, the Nuclear Posture Review, and important policy speeches--is in many ways the ultimate continuation of Rea ganism. In fact, the Bush policy of aggression abroad and reaction at home is the post-Soviet version of Reaganism.
The Bush doctrine of unimpeded world conquest has been dashed to bits in the cities and on the highways of Iraq. This early and abject failure has come about despite the collapse of the USSR, which ended the restraint that was formerly imposed upon U.S. imperialism by the military, political and economic competition of the socialist bloc. It demonstrates the limits of such a rabidly aggressive, world-conquering strategy when it has to go beyond threats and saber rattling and face organized, mass resistance on the ground.
The failure of the Bush doctrine shows a fundamental misconception of the neoconservatives, who regard themselves as heirs of Reagan concerning the role of imperialist military force in bringing about the demise of the USSR and presumably setting the stage for Washing ton's world domination. Right-wing ideologues habitually attribute the collapse of the USSR to the militaristic policies of Reagan. From this they conclude that overwhelming military superiority will guarantee the expansion of Washington's world empire and absolute dominance in the 21st century.
REAGAN RELIED ON THREAT OF FORCE
The relative role of Reagan's military build-up and his "full-court press" in bringing about the collapse of the USSR is open to discussion and requires analysis. But one thing about the collapse of the USSR and the Reagan policy is indisputable: the Pentagon never had to fire a shot or put soldiers on the ground. This infamous imperialist "triumph" was disastrous for the world working class, the nationally independent countries that had freed themselves from colonialism, and the national liberation movements around the world. But to the extent that Reagan's militarism contributed to it, it was done not by the use of direct force against the socialist camp but rather through the threat of force, through military, political and economic pressure and the use of indirect force--such as the funding of the counter-revolutionaries in Afghanis tan, military encirclement and so on.
This threat of force certainly promoted the development of reactionary bourgeois social layers in the upper echelons of Soviet society, which were either conciliatory to U.S. imperialism or downright partial to capitalist restoration. They all ultimately coalesced behind Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who paved the way for the capitalist restoration carried out under Boris Yeltsin.
Reviewing the Reagan administration's actual record in direct military conflict, it consists largely of three episodes: the 1983 invasion of the tiny island nation of Grenada; the 1986 bombing of Libya, includ ing the home of Mohammar Qaddafi, killing his baby daughter; and the sending of U.S. Marines to Lebanon in 1982, which ended up in a disaster for the U.S. military.
Even the invasion of Grenada was done in a cowardly, opportunistic way. It was carried out in the wake of the assassination of Maurice Bishop, the popular leader of the radical nationalist revolution, during internal factional strife. The leadership was disunited and the masses were completely disoriented. If the leadership had been together and the masses organized for resistance, even the invasion of this tiny island might have turned out very differently for the invasion forces.
Of course, Reagan funded the death-squad governments in El Salvador and Guatemala, sent aid to the contras in Nicaragua, and promoted counter- revolution around the world. But the actual use of direct U.S. military force under Reagan, the type of direct military force that the Bush administration attempted to use to re-colonize Iraq, was actually minimal and therefore totally untested.
It was the $2-trillion arms buildup, push ing advanced missiles into forward positions directed at the USSR, and the aggressive funding of and support for proxy counter-revolutionary forces that characterized the Reagan policy.
Bush deliberately sought to appeal to the right wing by casting his political image in the Reagan mold. Bush has carried out his wars and domestic reaction with an "anti-terrorism" crusade and infamous threats against the so-called "Axis of Evil"--his code words for governments that have stood up for independence, self-determination and self-defense against U.S. imperialism. This is a conscious imitation of Reagan, who carried out his foreign policy under the banner of an anti-communist crusade against Evil Empire"--by which he meant societies that stand for the abolition of capitalist exploitation and private property.
The Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perle grouping around Bush has sought to continue the militaristic momentum of U.S. imperialism built up under Reagan. But their thesis that the collapse of the USSR opened an unobstructed road to empire through military intimidation and conquest, based upon the achievements of the Reagan administration, omitted the fundamental fact that under Reagan there never was a major conflict between U.S. imperialist forces on the ground and the organized working class and oppressed masses determined to struggle.
Reagan was the beneficiary of a historical conjuncture in which the U.S. military buildup and the huge advances in the scientific-technological revolution in the West coincided with the maturation and the political emergence of a reactionary generation of Soviet leaders. This conjuncture worked to undermine, intimidate and ultimately overcome the conservatized Soviet leadership, leaving the Soviet masses completely unprepared and unorganized to stop the counter-revolution.
But, as the Bush administration and the U.S. ruling class are finding out in the relatively small country of Iraq, it is a wholly different matter to overcome an armed, organized mass resistance fighting against colonialism and for national liberation.
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