As we approach mid 2008, governments all over the world are becoming more conscious of the change of administration in the United States that will take place at the beginning of next year. The intensity of the Democratic nomination race cannot but reinforce that coming event in our minds, and force world leaders, including those in the Caribbean, and indeed ordinary non-American citizens, to ponder the future policies of the United States over the next five years.
In doing so our minds will be thrown back to the new promises of American policy as President Bill Clinton demitted office, and the George Bush administration took is place. At the level of generality, Bush had campaigned against an excessive American interventionism abroad, a commitment to concentrate on the continued strengthening of the American economy and on a more precise assessment of its external obligations. President Clinton was leaving an American economy in what appeared to be relatively good shape, riding the waves of globalization with its technological supremacy. But on the other hand, Americans had begun to become conscious of the pitfalls of international overstretch, an assessment typified by a forced American withdrawal from Somalia.
But over the period of the Bush administration, his electoral promise of care in respect of external adventures rapidly turned to the bold, virtually uniltateral, intervention in Iraq, justified by the absolute necessity to prevent another September 11, 2001 event, and an assumed obligation to what it would take to protect the homeland.
At the level of the economy, as the Bush administration draws to a close, American citizens have fallen victim to the apparent suddenness and severity of the sub-prime crisis, with mighty and long-standing commercial banks collapsing, millions of Americans forced to give up their homes due to inability to maintain mortgage payments, and an administration initially paralysed as to what its response should be. Confidence in President Bush’s ability to handle the crisis has dramatically collapsed and he leaves government with one of the lowest poll ratings of any US president.
Compare this with the widespread acclamation of the President, when he declared “Mission accomplished” a few months after the Iraq intervention.
Today, as the primary campaigns for the November general elections roll on, the candidates of both parties have been seen to be shaping their strategies and speeches to a sense of widespread citizen concern and despondency over both the national economy and America’s place in the world. The domestic and international situations of the country’s economy are seen to exhibit fragility. There is concern about the nation’s status as the great trading economy of the world – a concern which has now elicited a defensive posture from the Democratic pretenders to the throne. The spectacle of Senator Hillary Clinton virtually denouncing NAFTA, which her husband, as President had spent so much political capital to achieve, is an outstanding example of this. Senator Obama, sensing the mood, has felt forced to follow suit, and insist on renegotiation of that trade agreement
Secondly, Americans are perplexed by the rise in oil prices – a situation which over decades they have presumed their country to be in control of.
They almost refuse to accept change in the international context of the supply and demand of petroleum, and the fact that their government no longer can contain the price at the pump. They are finding it hard to accept the recent observations of an analyst in the New York Times, which precisely sum up their present predicament: “No industrialized economy is as reliant on oil, or as obsessed with gasoline prices, as the United States, the world’s biggest consumer of oil. But the oil market is largely immune to Washington’s machinations, and prices have more than quadrupled over the last six years for reasons that are increasingly disconnected from what happens in the United States… The reality is that oil is a globally traded commodity, and Americans must pay international prices to get their share.”
Yet, as the primary campaign goes on, the candidates continue to give the impression that one or other of them will be able to turn things around.
Then there is Bush’s discovery that the capacity of the United States to control the trade arrangements of the world is not what it once was. A great success proclaimed for the US in the initial years of the 1990s, was its guiding of the negotiations for a new world trade regulatory system towards the establishment of the World Trade Organisation, changing the nature of the GATT rules to include provisions not only for the conditions of trade, but the conditions of production of the goods to be traded.
This gave President Bush the confidence to take up the mantle of pushing on negotiations for further trade agreements, a process which had somewhat stalled in the last years of President Clinton’s administration.
And we in the Caribbean will well recall that the promise which Clinton had made to ensure “NAFTA parity” – equality of treatment with Mexico for access to the US market of our goods traded under the CBI – was achieved only after Bush’s accession to office.
Bush therefore sought to pursue the liberalization of trade and production with further international trade negotiations, now under the so-called Doha Development Round. And secondly, he sought to push on with the original Clinton initiative for the establishment of a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas – in effect an Hemispheric Free Trade system which, in our case would have superseded the CBI/Caribbean Trade Partnership Agreement with the US. But both of these initiatives have faced immense difficulty, as the United States has found that new emerging economic powers have insisted on greater equality of conditions of trade and production between the North Atlantic economic powers and themselves. In our case, both at the WTO and FTAA levels, Brazil has stood out against critical American proposals. This situation has pushed the US in the direction of seeking a series of bilateral trade arrangements with willing countries – the opposite of the multilateralism which she previously advocated as best for this era.
Finally, the difficulties of achieving a conclusive accomplishment of her mission in Iraq, has led to mounting diplomatic frustration in the US, a certain loss of legitimacy for her policies and actions worldwide, and a loss of legitimacy for one of her crucial allies, Tony Blair of Britain, forcing his demitting of office as Prime Minister.
Predominant opinion now is that Bush has no choice but to hand over the Iraq issue to his successor, his immediate policy being directed at avoiding any catastrophe in that country before he leaves.
In a subsequent editorial we will look at the implications of America’s present situation for us in the Caribbean.
