------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the May 31, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- NEW NATO FOR ASIA: BUSH STRIVES TO BUILD ANTI-CHINA ALLIANCE By Fred Goldstein As the Bush administration sends its envoys around the world to gain support for a global missile defense system, it is employing an ominous diplomatic strategy. While selling its plans for high-tech militarization in capitals around the world, Washington is trying to put together an Asian alliance to serve as the political foundation for its new, aggressive Cold War-style campaign of military pressure. The campaign is aimed against both the People's Republic of China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. In a major article entitled "Asia: the New U.S. Strategy," Business Week dated May 28 wrote that, "In Tokyo, there is lofty talk of Japan enhancing its role as linchpin for America's security presence in Asia. In New Delhi, there is murmuring in political circles over the Defense Ministry's warm reception of President George W. Bush's grandiose plan for a missile defense system. In Taipei, the government of President Chen Shui-bian is cheered by one of the strongest commitments yet by Washington.... And down in Singapore, the government is showing off its huge new naval pier, which will service foreign warships such as the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. "In essence" wrote Business Week, "Washington hopes to redraw the map of Asia." While the Bush administration hopes to continue the previous policy of trade and investment in China, "what is afoot is the biggest shift in U.S. global strategy since the Reagan era. Far from being guided by right-wing isolationists, as some had imagined, Bush is being advised by old cold warriors who believe the U.S. must act forcefully to promote its global interests." The Bush administration also includes South Korea, the Philippines and Australia in its plans and is even trying to seduce the counter-revolutionary Russian government of Alexander Putin into some kind of secret understanding in which the Russian capitalists would get a payoff in high- tech contracts. CAJOLING JAPAN AND INDIA Central to the strategy is the partial remilitarization of Japanese imperialism on the northern tier and an alliance with the Indian bourgeoisie on the southern tier. "Japan, which received less U.S. attention in the 1990s as its manufacturing and financial power deteriorated, is to be pushed as a bulwark in America's Asian line of defense," wrote Business Week, "an ally that must strengthen its army and signal its willingness to fight in any conflict that erupts. "On the Korean peninsula," continues the magazine, "the U.S. will again treat the communist North as a rogue state and work more skeptically with Seoul on entente with the regime of Kim Jong Il. And India-that's the surprise player. New Delhi, long hostile to the U.S., is to be enlisted to work with the U.S. to offer a strategic counterweight to China in the south." The viability of such an alliance is highly doubtful because of a multitude of contradictions. Nevertheless, the attempt speaks volumes about the counter-revolutionary, militaristic orientation of the Bush administration toward China. The "old cold warriors" are trying to repeat the anti-Soviet scenario. The post-World War II struggle against the USSR got underway full scale when U.S. imperialism was able to galvanize western Europe into the NATO alliance in 1949, rearm German imperialism and confront the USSR and eastern Europe with a massive military bloc in the west, from the Baltic to the Adriatic. The USSR had to face not only the Pentagon's nuclear terror but also the entire combined force of all of Western imperialism. The new grouping of militarists in the Bush administration-- Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, his Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, and a whole layer of subordinates--have laid out a military strategy of long-range warfare directed at China and all the socialist countries of Asia. But they know that they cannot militarily dominate the vast regions of the Pacific and the South China Sea and coordinate a "full-court press" against the PRC without alliances. The idea of getting Japan and India to play such an aggressive role in a U.S.-dominated military alliance has only become thinkable since the collapse of the USSR and the retreat of the Chinese Revolution. The Eisenhower administration and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles put together an anti-communist alliance in 1955--the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization--composed of Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, France, Britain, New Zealand and the U.S. This pathetic alliance fell apart under the impact of the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian revolutions and the advance of the Chinese Revolution. At the time India could not possibly align itself militarily with U.S. imperialism. The national bourgeoisie of India was in its anti-colonial phase. The masses were infused with hatred of British imperialism and deeply suspicious of U.S. imperialism. Even after New Delhi was maneuvered into an anti-China position by the U.S. in the 1962 border conflict with China, its alliance with the USSR allowed it to maintain an openly adversarial position vis-�-vis Western imperialism. TALK OF A STRATEGIC ALLIANCE With the demise of the USSR and the natural evolution of the Indian bourgeoisie to its reactionary phase, New Delhi was penetrated by the IMF and transnational corporations. It has moved closer and closer to Western imperialism. Thus the Washington Post of May 20 wrote, "Three years after India exploded five nuclear devices in the Rajasthan Desert, triggering U.S. economic and military sanctions, the two countries are finding common ground on nuclear policy that Indian officials hope will lead to a full-fledged strategic partnership." A year ago, according to the Post, Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said that his government was "opposed to the militarization of space." But a month ago Singh visited Bush in the Oval Office and emerged smiling. "Indian officials," continued the Post, "hailed [the U.S. missile defense plan] as a 'far reaching' concept that could 'make a clean break with the past' and overcome the 'adversarial legacy' of the Cold War." In short, the Indian bourgeoisie, armed with nuclear weapons, could aim its missiles at Pakistan and China with the protection of a U.S. missile shield. In return New Delhi was undoubtedly promised all manner of economic and political rewards. Armitage, who was in New Delhi to promote the new alliance, condemned Pakistan on the very day that Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji was in Karachi on a state visit. Armitage announced that Gen. Henry Shelton, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is going to India next month. JAPANESE RIGHT WING'S IMPERIAL AMBITIONS In Japan also, during the heyday of the USSR and China's revolutionary phase, the working class and revolutionary youth would never have permitted any prime minister to talk of remilitarizing the country and collaborating militarily with the U.S. against the PRC. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower went to Tokyo in 1960 to sign a U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, he had to be lifted from his besieged motorcade in a helicopter when the masses stormed it in protest against the pact. During the Vietnam War millions of socialists, communists and anti- imperialist youths constantly battled riot police to protest the use of Japanese bases as rear areas for U.S. forces. It was only with the period of world reaction ushered in by the collapse of the USSR and the retreat of the Chinese Revolution at home and abroad that the tide of anti- imperialist and anti-capitalist militancy receded in Japan, allowing the forces of reaction and militarism to progress. Thus the new prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, has promised to revise Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution that has prevented it from having a standing army. The victorious U.S. imperialists in World War II, led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, drew up this Constitution to keep Japan from competing with Wall Street in Asia. To overturn this provision has long been the program of the militaristic right wing in Japan, which wants to revive the imperial empire that brutally occupied China, the Korean peninsula and much of southeast Asia prior to and during World War II. According to The Economist of May 17, Koizumi "wants to end the pretense of Japan's 'self-defense forces' and call them what they are: modern, well-equipped armed forces. He seeks a more active role for Japan in its security alliance with America, including an explicit commitment to come to America's aid" in the event of a conflict in the region. It just so happens that Koizumi's program coincides precisely with a private report co-authored by Richard Armitage last year. It "called on Japan to revise its Constitution to be able to field an army, and to accept a larger share of the alliance's defense burden," according to the New York Times of May 9. The Times, referring to Armitage, said, "A senior American official who in the past has advocated a full-fledged army for Japan urged Tokyo today to develop a partnership with Washington that more closely resembles the alliance between Britain and the United States." NO LASTING ALLIANCE BETWEEN MASTERS AND SLAVES But for all their calculations and attempts to reproduce in Asia a NATO-style alliance, the Cold War militarists are bound to fail. What they overlook is that NATO was an alliance of imperialists. Their inter-imperialist rivalry was easily superseded by the overriding counter- revolutionary imperialist aims of overthrowing socialism. Furthermore, all but the U.S. were located on one concentrated land mass and contiguous with one another. They were easily mobilized and bulldozed into an alliance of self- preservation by the imperialist master in Washington. Most importantly, NATO arose at a time of imperialist growth, largely based upon plunder of the oppressed countries, which enabled the capitalists of Europe and the U.S. to maintain social stability at home and hold the working class at bay. None of these conditions prevail today. The only major imperialist country is Japan in the region (Australia is a sub-imperialist country). The U.S. has to be exceedingly cautious in allowing the rearmament of the Japanese ruling class. It is a predatory class that aspires to conquer Asia with the same and perhaps even greater fervor than Wall Street. It considers Asia its territory and the U.S. an intruder-even if it has to mask its sentiments out of military inferiority. India, on the other hand, is a former colonial country that has hundreds of millions of super-oppressed workers and peasants. This is a condition that makes the regime inherently unstable. No great anti-China alliance can rest upon such instability. Popular resistance could break up the alliance before it is even consumated. The situation can be compared to the Middle East, where the U.S. imperialists must rely upon Israel because none of the Arab regimes can be stable, no matter how much they desire to be compliant. In open warfare in Asia the U.S. can rely only on Japan because of common imperialist interests. What makes things worse for the U.S. rulers is that they are trying to cobble together an alliance between Japan and many of the formerly colonial countries, like South Korea and the Philippines, that were invaded and enslaved by the Japanese imperial military. The antagonism inherent in this strategy has already surfaced between Seoul and Tokyo. Furthermore, all the ruling classes of Asia have great economic ties with China. Finally, U.S. imperialism's attempt to build an open alliance against China and the DPRK could become the trigger for rebellion against any regime that makes such a dirty pact with the devil. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
