Ironically, US planners casually discarded the very order and law they had imposed on the world sixty years earlier. Bush’s invasion of Iraq nullified both the Nuremberg laws that outlawed aggressive or pre-emptive war and, by bypassing the United Nations Security Council, the UN’s important function: the exclusive right to make war.

The neo cons and their Christian counterparts wanted US leaders to take unqualified command again, as they did in 1945. They dismissed as inconsequential the massive changes that had occurred during the six intervening decades. In those heady post war days, the United States possessed 55% of the world’s manufacturing capacity, a wildly growing economy and a monopoly over atomic weapons. The disastrous war had sapped the juice from the other imperial nations. The Soviet Union didn’t loom as a threat. Victorious on the battlefield, the Soviets were also deeply crippled: fifty plus million dead and wounded, 200 cities destroyed, no food, no boots for the soldiers.

US planners also projected that their corrupt, puppet regime of Chang Kai Shek could hold out against the encroaching red armies of Mao Tse Tung. By October 1949, Chiang had lost his ability to attract even the support of dishonest. So much for planning!

Washington told its cooperating allies – including the newly vanquished Germany and Japan – that they should prosper as good albeit junior trading partners and sources and sites of investment, but not to the point of becoming rivals. For nations emerging from colonial rule, the US had no realistic plans. But the crippled Soviets kept preaching “revolution,” a word that gained resonance in the countries that came to be known as the third world. And movements in those emerging nations threatened to disturb the new order that US leaders had placed upon the world.

The problem with their plans derived from their inability to predict the dynamism of third world anti colonialism. Instead of supporting de-colonization, the United States played an ambiguous role, supporting the idea but not the practice of “free nations.” For example, by not recognizing the Ho Chi Minh-led Republic of Vietnam – which declared independence in August 1945 – Washington helped France retake its former colony.

The most important revolution, however, occurred in China. In 1949, the Chinese Communists led their people to overthrow western colonialism, tossing the United States out of the very place that 19th Century planners had staked their hopes for the future.

Now, China apparently sees its future in the US market and in its previously shielded sphere of Latin America. Thirty five years ago, China remained “unrecognized” by the United States and most of its lackey governments in Latin America. In 1975, Chinese trade with the region amounted to $200 million; in 2004, over $40 billion. China has become one of the foremost players in the era of globalization, which US leaders promoted without considering that China might avail itself of this opportunity to move into previously sacrosanct US spheres – like Latin America.

While government leaders silently wring their hands in frustration over China’s capital moves into “our backyard,” some journalists spoke directly about the meaning of China’s investment invasion of US clients. China is “nurturing alliances with many developing countries to solidify its position in the World Trade Organization, flex its muscles on the world stage and act as a counterbalance to US power,” opined Gary Marx (Chicago Tribune December 20, 2004).

Caribbean Council director David Jessop (Week In Europe, February 6) said the Chinese moves into Latin American “suggest the emergence of a global order in which the countries of the South begin to forge new alliances based on a very different perception of the world.”

“Beijing is attempting to throw an economic spear into the heart of the Monroe Doctrine,” commented Anthony Gancarski (FrontPageMagazine.com, January 20, 2005). He warned that “Failure to do something about that will be interpreted as a sign of America’s loss of mettle – and of vulnerability.”

Indeed, China has succeeded in forcing an Open Door policy on the United States, one similar to that fashioned in 1898 by Secretary of State Hay. China’s leaders now say implicitly to Washington what Acting Secretary of State Edwin Uhl wrote to the US Minister in China in 1895: “This country will expect equal and liberal trading advantages…”

Now China expects the United States to offer it “equal and liberal trading advantages,” even with governments that Washington has placed on the official black hat list. Senator Richard Lugar (R- IN), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, worried about the contradictions that arose from Venezuela’s new deals with China. Like other prudent and truly conservative Republicans, Lugar wonders whether Bush’s aggressive anti-Chavez rhetoric and actions might lead Venezuela to retaliate and cut the US off from its oil supply. After all, China will pick up the purchase slack!

“For years and years, the hemisphere has been a low priority for the US,” said an aide to Lugar, “and the Chinese are taking advantage of it. They’re taking advantage of the fact that we don’t care as much as we should about Latin America.” (New York Times, March 1, 2005)

Likewise, China has undercut Washington’s policy of starving Cuba from resources. Chinese leaders pledged large investment credits for Cuban nickel.

Beijing thus befriends US enemies, Chavez and Castro, as US prestige slips in its own “backyard.” It has used the “open door” ploy against the United States in Latin America as the US once used it against Europe to get at Chinese resources and labor. Hey, doesn’t globalization mean that all’s fair in the game of trade?

Landau teaches at Cal Poly Pomona University and is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Reposted by Bulatlat

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