Translated from GegenStandpunkt 1-1995

Republican election victory in the USA

The fundamentalism of a world power under attack and its prescription

The only remaining superpower is dissatisfied with its situation. The world of states is not unquestioningly submitting to its superior power; the dollar, once the measure of all the world’s wealth, is increasingly losing the esteem it deserves. The USA has competitors, and it does not like that. So American politics is seeking ways to restore its old, undisputed world power status. It is not succeeding; and the more this becomes apparent, the more American leaders find themselves confronted by the mounting criticism of a nation to which they owe the restoration of American power and glory. Now the wrath of disappointment has also hit President Clinton, who was sworn into office just two years ago. He promised his people that he would turn the situation around, was elected against the victor of the Gulf War, and did not even get around to implementing his promised reforms. Now he has been punished for his “failure” in the congressional elections. A new crop of politicians – this time again from the Republican Party – is stepping up to reclaim America’s right to lead the world. Their “national renewal” program promises to finally do away with everything that stands in the way of America’s right to success, both at home and abroad.

“Contract with America”

The Republicans have dressed up their political program in the form of a “contract,” solemnly signed on the steps of the Capitol, which commits them, as the future holders of legislative power, to “America.”[1] In it, they announce what they intend to do to bring about a “national renewal”:

“As Republican Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body we propose not just to change its policies, but even more important, to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives. That is why, in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print. This year’s election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family. Like Lincoln, our first Republican president, we intend to act ‘with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.’ To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace. To make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.”

The right of the citizens to a trustworthy representation of the nation is to be realized through congressional reform:

“On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government: FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress; SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse; THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third; FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs; ... SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public...”

This renovated Congress is expected to pass a series of bills aimed at putting “national renewal” into practice. The most important of these are:

“THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.
THE TAKING BACK OUR STREETS ACT: An anti-crime package including stronger truth-in- sentencing, ‘good faith’ exclusionary rule exemptions, effective death penalty provisions, and cuts in social spending from this summer’s ‘crime’ bill to fund prison construction and additional law enforcement to keep people secure in their neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools.
THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs, and enact a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility.
THE AMERICAN DREAM RESTORATION ACT: A S500 per child tax credit, begin repeal of the marriage tax penalty, and creation of American Dream Savings Accounts to provide middle class tax relief.
THE NATIONAL SECURITY RESTORATION ACT: No U.S. troops under U.N. command and restoration of the essential parts of our national security funding to strengthen our national defense and maintain our credibility around the world.”

In bombastic rhetoric – including the invocation of the nation’s founding fathers and the supernatural power (we already know from the national anthem that the Lord in heaven protects “America” in particular) – the Republicans present the electorate with a negative image of the nation in which “forty years of Democratic party rule” have thrown overboard all the principles by which America should be governed. Their own promise to the voters is to restore these principles. The Republicans want to reduce government activity to its rightful level and ensure that in the future it stays out of the lives of citizens as much as possible, and lets them do what is their right. They promise to promote and cherish the American family, to use taxpayers’ money sparingly, and to abide by the rules of society when spending money; to punish criminals ruthlessly and to protect the citizens’ right to self-defense; to stop spoiling the poor with gifts of money and to encourage them to take responsibility for their own lives; to help the good citizen and taxpayer realize his “American dream.” Last but not least, under its aegis, the nation’s interests are to be secured and defended all over the world so that America’s enemies don’t have a chance.

What the Republicans are offering their electorate here as a program are general principles of good governance for America. The actual workings of state power appear in these principles, if at all, then as mere means to help higher points of view such as “thrift,” “honesty,” “national credibility,” etc., achieve a breakthrough. There is nothing wrong with them; this is precisely what makes them so valuable as overriding moral standards against which any real policy has to prove itself and can be discredited. The voter is asked to imagine the activities of both the government and the opposition as expressions of compliance with or violation of these standards, in order to then make a decision – in favor of the Republicans, of course. All he has to do is imagine the replacement of the government team as the realization of his need for better governance and himself as the counterparty to a “contract” that the Republicans, as service providers commissioned by him, sign with him as the representative of “America.” So far, the “contract” follows the simple propagandistic pattern of every democratic election campaign: for a brief minute, the voter is supposed to believe that he is the real master of the fate of the nation and imagine that he is allowed to decide how “America” will be governed in the future.

The principles of good government that the Republicans put forward in their platform are neither original nor “revolutionary,” and they are not intended to be. The Republicans explicitly promise to return to the world of American values and virtues that have been neglected and disregarded in recent years. As their special trademark, they invoke the old familiar belief, implanted in the national soul of every US citizen, in the unique nation of America and in the special relationship between state and citizen that corresponds to it. The richest and most powerful nation on God’s earth corresponds to free citizens with guns in their closets, to the family being honored, to a state authority that only exists to punish criminals, to promote the capable, to put the poor in their place, and to beat back America’s enemies – every American knows this and somehow believes it. In the name of this ideal image of an “America” in harmony with itself and its citizens, the Republicans want to come to power in order to fight against everything that deviates from this ideal, from obscene works of art to American troops under UN command.

This image of genuine American governance in the service of free citizens is by no means “backward looking,” as some enlightened European critics would have it. It does not seek to portray America’s ideals as the nation’s past, but as an ideal standard for the demands that the nation should meet here and now in its own eyes and those of its citizens. As such, they are valid in the USA; the ideology that American politics – at least in principle – ought to go the way the Republicans envision it is the inexhaustible source from which the media and the public draw every day to denounce the wickedness of reality with its juvenile delinquents, its budget deficits, growing tax burdens, and foreign policy disagreements. It is precisely in the constant complaints about how rotten everything is in the USA, from security policy to family life, that the national self-confidence celebrates the American people for being a very special breed of people and the American state for being the most sublime institution that has ever existed in the history of mankind. That is why these ideals are not open to scrutiny[2]; as ideals, they give the ordinary American the freedom to happily take sides with the coercive power over him, and how else could this be done but in the name of a better reality? That is why no American politician misses the opportunity to present his political plans in the light of these ideals and to portray himself as the very personal embodiment of righteousness, fear of God, and family values in order to prove his calling to the highest offices of state. He owes this to himself and to the American people, who have every right to expect that their leaders will hold high and dear the belief in the special goodness of the American nation. Clinton also promised a new “covenant with the people” during the last election, invoking the same ideals and principles. On the other hand, the Republicans’ claim that only they and their program are truly in line with the nation’s ideals, while the administration’s policies are a complete violation of them, is entirely in keeping with the usual American election campaign routine.

Nevertheless, if the media stubbornly insists on the image of a “Republican revolution” that has taken place with the new majority in Congress; if the foreign press discovers indications that American foreign policy is now becoming more “unpredictable,” and if some new tones are also being struck in domestic policy, then this suggests that the Republicans with their nationalistic rhetoric are shaking up something other than just the staffing of state offices.

Campaigning for “good government”: a new House majority makes itself credible

In any case, the new Republican guard has achieved the banal goal of denigrating the government and bringing the Republicans to power in Congress by committing themselves to the principles of genuine American governance – not least by being extraordinarily militant during the election campaign, even by US standards.[3] Jesse Helms took the cake by saying that Clinton’s “draft dodging” made him a traitor to the country, which even his own party’s strategists saw, in the name of political decency, as going too far.

But the Republicans are not stopping there; after gaining a majority, they are taking action. First, they have implemented a thorough reform of Congress and reduced the number of committees, their membership and funding. This is a cheap move in that such a measure has no consequences for any real state imperative and at the same time makes the advocates of a true renewal of state activity look extremely convincing and responsible. Their promise to the voters that the government and those in power will in the future perform their duties prudently, responsibly, economically, and honestly can easily be fulfilled by the new congressional majority not only presenting itself as a new guard for old offices, but also by making a few corrections to administrative procedures. In this way, it’s easy to counter the suspicion that it is ultimately “only about power.” This abstract-methodological suspicion, as empty of content as it is of principle, that those appointed to exercise power are “in reality” not concerned about “the good of us all,” but simply themselves, corresponds precisely with the opposing “evidence” that the Republicans have come up with. “Privileges” for the supreme guardians of the law? Not for us; we ourselves undertake to abide by all the laws that we impose on the rest of the people. “Abuse of power” and “wasting money”? That doesn’t happen with us; we are having our official activities monitored by the guaranteed impartial authority of an auditing firm. A bloated committee system that wastes money and time behind the scenes and out of the public eye with cronyism, “deals,” and similar shady schemes? We’ve put a stop to that by abolishing a few committees and reducing the number of staff. This is how the Republicans are proving, first, that they are serious about “saving money” – after all, they are “starting with themselves” – and, second, that under their aegis the House will only do the work that is needed for proper legislation. If all this doesn’t show that the new guard is serious about the principle that “legality” and the “national good” will guide the actions of the new Congress! This offensive in the department of statesmanlike self-portrayal is all the more impressive because Clinton had already promised similar reforms to the government apparatus, but had been unable to prevail against his own party apparatus. The Republicans can now style themselves all the more credibly as the true representatives of the generally recognized need to transform Congress back into a place of responsible government.

This is all the more true since these measures take nothing away from the Republicans’ own newly acquired power in the state. As far as the content of Congress’s “new accountability” is concerned, the Republicans themselves make it clear that it has nothing to do with reforming the procedures of governance, but simply the new majority situation. They are resolutely using it to put an end to one type of “democratic mismanagement”: the one that has allowed all sorts of false, un-American interests to gain a foothold in the Washington government apparatus. Unions, minority organizations, nature conservation groups, and the like should no longer have any say there. What the Republicans are really after here is a change in the domestic political climate regarding the question of which viewpoints are still legitimately allowed to have a voice in domestic political disputes and which are not. The reporting in the national daily newspapers shows that they have already had some success in this area; the American press is obviously happy to seize the opportunity to say goodbye to the era of “liberalism” in the name of the new “zeitgeist.” The Republicans see this as a “step in the right direction” in terms of restoring “America.” But they want to do more. With their new legislative proposals, they are upsetting a lot more in the US political scene than just the calculations of a few members of Congress.

Moralists in action: The content of state reform in the name of “free competition”

The political and moral imagery of the “contract” has wholeheartedly fulfilled its intended function of making “40 years of Democratic party rule” responsible for all the evils of American reality and making the opposition appear in the bright light of the party that is morally entitled to lead the state. The Republicans show with their legislative proposals that they didn’t want to merely conjure up this imagery. They use it to promise the practical implementation of the principles of good governance that have been neglected for so long; and by this they mean a real correction of the policies that the American state has pursued in various areas in recent years. They are obviously serious about this project, as their “balanced budget” bill shows, as do their initiatives on “welfare reform,” the death penalty, and tax cuts for “the middle class.” Essentially, there are two principles that the Republicans claim must finally really – i.e. not just “verbally” – govern state activity in the USA:

The first principle is “too much government.” The Republicans want to act on this with the “Personal Responsibility Act,” i.e. by eliminating “welfare” for unmarried mothers and cuts to other types of social spending. The Republicans have a simple criterion for deciding which American government expenditures are “too much”: this includes all payments for people who have fallen out of the normal competition for job opportunities and income. The Republicans do not say by which measure this spending is “too much” for the fulfillment of which state tasks; however, the radicalism with which they want to proceed on this front makes it clear that it is not the spending for such budget items that is “too much,” but that they consider it a mistake that the US government ever set up such budget items in the first place. They also present the whole thing as a kind of state educational measure: by law, an example is meant to be set that the American state rewards decency and a sense of duty and punishes irresponsibility. The latter goal is also served by the plan to tighten crime prevention measures, which aptly complement the verdict “too much government.”

The second principle is “Policies for the American taxpayer.” The cuts in social spending, the planned tax cuts, the “American Dream Restoration Act” and, above all, the project of a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget fall under this title. As the beneficiaries of all these proposals for the reorganization of state finances, the Republicans are putting forward the “taxpayer” whose “interests” the state budget should once again be oriented to. What is this all about?

“Too much government”

In the USA as well, what state power has to do in each case results from the necessities imposed on it by the contradictions of class society, the returns on capital, and the status of international competition between states. How a nation fulfills such necessities depends entirely on the image that the state leaders have of their mission: Of the rights they think they have, the barriers they discover, the means they have or think they have to correct the national situation. None of this has anything to do with “much” or “little” government – but rather with the freedoms a nation can allow itself in dealing with its resources and what constraints it sees itself exposed to in coping with its situation. This is also the case with the idea, firmly anchored in the American national consciousness, that the state and its citizens always fare best when the state had as few rights as possible and the citizens have as many rights as possible.

The objective basis for this idea is that the US state has never had to worry about the success of its capitalism and help it along. Its contribution to this success was to bind its citizens to the laws of capitalist competition with all its rigor and coercive force; but neither in terms of the resources that would have had to be made available to capital at special state expense, nor in terms of the class conflicts that would have had to be reconciled by the welfare state, did the American state power ever have to pay much attention to ensuring that national growth and the necessary state revenues would result from this competition between its citizens. This freedom of the US state also had the side effect that all expenditure on its apparatus of violence almost automatically promoted the business success of its capitalists. The fact that state power represents faux frais for capital has always been the case in the USA too; but these faux frais more or less paid for themselves and therefore never had to be accommodated by the state in such a way that it started calculating expenditures and income when collecting and spending money or had to think about how to make them profitable in the first place. The US state has always collected everything it needed in taxes from its citizens and borrowed as required; what it took for itself in terms of social wealth and squandered really wasn’t “little”! But even the biggest war of all time did not weaken its capital accumulation; on the contrary, it made the USA the creditor of the rest of the world and its national credit the only world money.

An unconditional imposition and unleashing of competition was – until recently – the means of success for this nation. National morality has found its own meaning in this, namely one that turns the situation a little upside down. According to this, the state’s command to compete unconditionally is considered a very special moral right and path to success for American citizens, and the state appears as the service provider of this right. It is tasked with clearing away every obstacle that stands in the way of those who make their own fortune in competition in order to increase national success at the same time as promoting private success. Taken together, these two things then result in the special path to success that this nation, or rather the special breed of people called Americans – this coincides – has chosen as the one that corresponds to their nature. The American who successfully complies with the state’s command to compete is not only allowed to bask in the knowledge that he is thereby behaving like a good American; he is also allowed to imagine that he is doing his part for the nation. The nation’s reward for him is to be uniquely rich and powerful as a nation and thus prove itself worthy of its inhabitants. All this is summed up in the character image of the “good” American who is as God-fearing as he is success-oriented, and of his national homeland, which, in the form of the “American family,” is entirely dedicated to cultivating the virtues of competition and celebrating the national flag.

This image of the American nation as a community of free citizens who strive for achievement and success comes without any moral reflection on the fact that inferior interests should be “taken into account” or even “reconciled” in the interests of the “national community.” In the USA, “social peace” is not an objective by which the state authority has ever measured itself in its dealings with the lower classes; therefore, private morality also knows no point of view under which the losers in the competition would be entitled to have their plight taken into account. The hypocritical ploy of justifying private ruthlessness in the light of a service to the greater good and expressing regret about the victims that simply accrue in the pursuit of private interests is not common among Americans. Their hypocrisy immediately takes the form of self-righteousness: success ennobles both the means by which it is achieved and the person concerned. The victims that accrue are simply accepted; anyone who is unable to contribute to the general “pursuit of happiness” is also not contributing to the national community; he is a burden on society and also deserves to be treated as such.

The identity of national success and the right of self-made people to triumph in the competition is thus transformed into a national article of faith that every American has a right to obey. From this moral point of view, any government that spends money on caring for the poor is criticized for rewarding people for shirking the duties of honest competition; likewise, every right-thinking American always believes that criminals are treated far too leniently in his country. In both respects, the US government has always calculated somewhat differently: For it, poverty and crime are first and foremost issues of law and order. A poverty that is no longer given any opportunity to cope with life must be organized, guarded, and supervised. All the programs that American governments have come up with in this regard owe their existence to this goal; even the “offers” of a few chances to possibly escape the ghetto through good behavior are explicitly intended as an alternative, a substitute, possibly even a cheaper alternative to police-state methods, which of course do not disappear for this reason. The costs that this type of “social policy” entails are even justified by the ideology that the American nation must grant even the lowest of its citizens a “life in freedom” – after all, it is not a police state without qualification.[4]

The USA's money and power have lost their unique position in the world. The Republicans view this situation from the standpoint of national morality and therefore see all the US government’s “social spending” as nothing but a violation of its most fundamental principles. It is one thing, however, whether a nation actually disposes over all the resources it needs for a successful capitalism and accordingly organizes its internal life free from all the barriers and considerations that less wealthy and sovereign capitalist states have to deal with; or whether government officials, faced with dwindling resources, identify a violation of the national principles of statehood as the cause of national decline and proceed to impose their own morality of free competition as a real standard of behavior for the nation. If the USA has not pursued social policies, it is because it has not needed to, and not because the money for it became “too much” at some point. The Republicans are reversing this relationship: They see the success that the American nation deserves missing, “conclude” that its absence is a national misstep in the areas of poverty relief and crime fighting, and become brutal.

The Republicans are targeting the unmarried, underage mother living on welfare and the juvenile felon as demonstration objects for their determination to correct the errors of previous social welfare programs. This is very popular; this group of people has long been used in the USA as a symbol for all the flaws of the lower class, such as moral decay, irresponsibility, and vulgar calculations. Their entire existence proves, in general opinion, that “welfare” merely produces socially harmful behavior and encourages the lower class to settle into their misery instead of ... Instead of what, not one of these philanthropists would know what to say. The misery is there, it’s increasing, and it’s not going away. The least that can be asked of the poor is that they behave decently, don’t reproduce unnecessarily, and don’t cost society anything. The Republicans practically enforce this morality by making punishment for antisocial behavior the sole criterion for welfare payments. Anyone who is destitute and then has children and/or takes drugs gets nothing. The same point of view guides them in criminal law. Criminals should be taken out of circulation; it is also hard to understand why moral concerns are still raised about people whose moral inferiority has so obviously been proven – hanging is included in the purity laws. This allows people to experience first-hand what it means to be arrested as the embodiment of a moral principle. At the same time, the Republicans want to repeal the law with which the last Congress restricted the sale of larger caliber firearms. The argument that such weapons are used to commit crimes did not convince them, but rather outraged them, because they saw a fundamental American principle being violated: guns are the citizen’s freedom – with this piece of private power he stands up for the power of the state, it proves his intact morality, and he uses it with the state and for it. A gun in the hands of a criminal has nothing whatsoever to do with this; one should not insult good Americans with this comparison.

The New Right is not concerned with redefining poverty support, but with rejecting any state interference in misery. The state’s calculation that “re-skilling” or “jobs in the ghetto” could perhaps be used to instrumentalize the will of those affected for the sake of “law and order” is seen by them as a single concession to the indecent materialism of the underclass. Looking our for one’s own advantage should only be honored in those who have something to count on; everyone else should look after themselves.[5]

A “Republican revolution” in the name of the “taxpayer”

The Republicans present the American “taxpayer” as the leading figure, client, and actual beneficiary of their project in the name of “too much government.”

Firstly, this includes most Americans, and secondly, it alludes to their less than glamorous “achievement” of allowing themselves to be fleeced by the state – everyone can feel addressed as an affected person – but only to then move on to the higher nature of this passive normal citizen. Invoked as an allegory for the Republican project, the taxpayer is someone who virtually presides over the American community, who embodies the specifically American relationship between the state and competition, who is entitled to his very own “do ut des”:

– He gives his money to the state – and the state then also has to get by on it, because it has received what it needs. The deduction from one’s own means is really that at all, but rather is transformed into a service of the shrewd citizen – class differences logically have no place in this symbolic sphere of the state – who proves with his “transfer” that he understands the needs of the community and that the state must be able to collect its “fair share.” The taxpayer can and wants to hand over part of his income because he, as a successful competitive subject, is in a position to do so and therefore considers it to be well invested. But then every deficit is also a violation of the quid pro quo: on the part of the state, there is not the same understanding and rationality that the citizen assumed with his “contribution,” but rather, such a deficit announces wastefulness, that the state has released itself from the pact sealed with the tax and pursues its own “non-tax-related” goals; it has fundamentally gone off the rails.

– The service the state has to provide is solely to safeguard the competition; and this in turn consists solely in guaranteeing the success of the successful. They do not want anything to be handed to them – mind you, we are talking about an allegorical figure here – because that would only be the hidden flip side of the manifest evil: namely, that tax money is being used to correct the fair results in favor of the losers. The competitive racism of the American knows the true, namely inferior nature of the losers – and a fair financial system accepts and affirms this. If it does not do this, then a tax really becomes a deduction; then the successful are hindered and their success diminished.

– Outwardly, the state is subject to the same commandment that the good American imposes on himself and his peers: It must prove itself in the competition between states. With such a team of sponsors, it cannot be incapable of competing by nature – but it owes its “tax payer” more: just as the taxpayer presents himself as the embodiment of all the virtues of success, its state must present itself as second to none in the competition between states and their superior; it must be No. 1. If it is not, or if this is in question, then the taxpayer’s money – which is only inadequately described as “hard” or “good” money; rather, it is coagulated success and a claim to success, proof of extremely high achievement in the most competitive competition in the world – has just been wasted again, robbed of its irresistible power to assert itself.

Waste and the “tax payer” are thus irreconcilably opposed to each other. The “taxpayer,” who is far more than just the voter, namely the true sovereign of American government, is bitter and dissatisfied that the state has strayed from its actual task and is failing its sole mandate. The Republican Party claims to have heard nothing but the justified dissatisfaction of this sovereign, and it stands up in his name when it points to the profound disorder that is expressed in the deficit: “The normal American guy,” nothing other than the ideal average of everyone striving for competitive perfection, is being deprived of the state’s due consideration for his success in competition, his materialization of the “American spirit.” Not in the cheap sense that he has paid in more than he has gotten out, but as a loss of the conditions of fair, American competition guaranteed by the state.

In the name of this figure, the Republican Party is taking a new position on the deficit. It has given up trying to remedy this deficit by tinkering with the budget, by shifting income and expenditures back and forth. For them, this type of austerity policy is nothing more than the perpetuation of a deeply unsatisfactory state of affairs: The search is on for ways to save money – but this search, no matter how rampant the “red pencil,” is conservative in the sense that it moves within long-established dependencies and takes a biased view of “essentials” that are not essential. The “Republican revolution” doesn’t want this any more – Clinton has spent enough time and pointless effort on this – but calls for an upheaval. Namely, in the relationship between state tasks and their financing: first the financial amount is fixed, then it becomes clear what can be financed and is therefore necessary, and what cannot be financed and is therefore superfluous. If it is not possible to eliminate the deficit by cutting expenditure here and increasing revenue there – in fact, everything just gets worse – then the deficit must be eliminated by force.

This is being enforced against the government, and indeed with a law: the “balanced budget amendment.” The obligation laid down in this law to eliminate the deficit when drawing up the budget, no matter what, i.e. even at the cost of questioning all necessities, has naturally provoked comments such as “acting foolishly” and “losing any sense of reality.” Such comments make fun of the impractical side of this law from their own points of view and customs, but fail to see how little the Republicans care about this, indeed, how much this impracticality is intentional: the prevailing disorder, which is due to a completely wrong way of running a state and touches on the foundations of the “American dream,” can’t be dealt with by conventional craftsmanship, no matter how many axes, planes, and saws are used. A completely new view of (state) affairs is needed – and it is by no means impractical in that it is willing and determined to cause disorder. This view does not care about the consequences – which immediately come to mind for all commentators – because it assumes that otherwise the entrenched dependencies can never be broken, that it will never be possible to find out what is actually necessary about the traditional order and what – as they see it – is anti-competitive ideology.[6]

If the government wants to defend itself against the Republican attack by pointing out that a law such as the “balanced budget amendment” – if implemented – will lead to a budgetary disaster, then it has fallen into a trap: This catastrophe is urgently needed to expose and put a stop to the government’s cover-up maneuvers once and for all. The stubborn dogmatism of not letting anything get through the government, or rather “the bureaucracy,” as usual and unchecked, of not allowing it to get involved in individual items and practicalities, methodically enforcing an unwillingness to compromise, is of course also aware of the necessity of compromises in practical life – but first the freedom must be won back to be able to make completely new decisions.

A “New Deal” on a grand scale: the world of states is being shaken up

It’s no secret to any American that US success leaves much to be desired and where: the “end of bipolarity” has been followed by a “loss of stability” which is always at the expense of the USA; sovereigns of the larger and – most strikingly – smaller kind do not want to accept sensible American proposals for (re-)ordering the world; instead, they develop and implement their own ideas, which do not coincide with America’s interests, and even thwart them.

– The supremacy of the USA, which is enshrined in the UN and NATO, is rapidly fading; the attempt to subordinate the allies to the UN and the UN to the USA under the umbrella title of “order” in the post-Cold War era is being undermined by them. In NATO, there are many competing ideas about order which is leading to a paralysis of this most powerful war alliance of all time – see Bosnia – and is therefore also and primarily an attack on the leadership role of the USA.

– The withdrawal from Somalia and the brief “humanitarian” guest appearance in Rwanda have proven that the USA can no longer guarantee an earlier achievement: The political map of the world, which was once riddled with states and sovereigns that could be addressed and arrested, is indeed showing more and more blank spots – in place of an “order” that quite fundamentally insisted on access and availability even without any current or foreseeable benefit and enforced this, there is the violence of clans and warlords who listen to no one and continually denounce the once sacred principle of “world order.” And with it, its guardian.

– Then there are sovereigns who take the dissolution of the systems as an opportunity to develop new interests and projects: Iraq, North Korea, Haiti... America confronts these sovereigns with the threat of its concentrated military power, but this in no way persuades them to give in immediately. Iraq may be giving in, but its persistent recalcitrance is certain. North Korea and Haiti are impressed by the violent side of “coercive diplomacy,” but still have the nerve to only back down after all kinds of compromises. As a result, these problem cases have not been resolved, but remain a cause for concern in American foreign policy.

– In the ongoing dispute with Japan, which may now be joined by one with China, the opponent continues to succeed in evading American demands for a “fair balance” or continues to pursue its trade methods that are harmful to America. On top of this, Japan’s efforts to organize its own sphere of influence – with a sideways glance at China – are unmistakable, which does not leave the ironclad “security partnership” with the USA unscathed.

– The dollar, caught in the gears of speculation, is falling; the times when the dominant Western power could demand the (monetary) support of its allies as a matter of course are over – a request for solidarity was rejected at the last G7 meeting; the euro currency, the deutschmark, and the yen are turning investors away, including American ones, and the US Treasury must worry about the sale of government bonds. The new economic alliance NAFTA, consisting of the USA, Canada and Mexico, has to fear the collapse of the Mexican peso, which is a very bad start for this “dollar zone.”

As an explanation of how all this can happen to America, the cause of every decline identified by the Republicans is of course also relevant here: “liberal” leadership, incapable of ensuring the proper course of competition and ensuring that those who make their fortune – that is, Americans – get the rewards and ranks they deserve.[7]

A fundamental imbalance in the nation is being diagnosed – but the right leadership can correct it at any time. And the Republicans are constantly making the government feel this; it is now clear to everyone that this can no longer be described as “mere election campaign polemics.” Although the tone becomes more moderate when leading Republican foreign policy makers talk about the “need for cooperation” with the government, they are not giving an inch on the matter. “Cooperation” is only possible if the government submits to the ideas of the new majority, otherwise it can expect a tough obstructionist policy, especially in the Senate.

The Republicans have already made it sufficiently clear where they are going with this:

– The UN is experiencing how the view of the budget is sharpening and changing the view of international relations. The reinvention of “dollar for dollar” – every dollar spent on behalf of the UN is deducted from the contribution – may lead to America no longer being a contributor and the UN becoming unable to act, but this is subordinate to the new perspective. Perhaps this consequence is even desirable and should be aimed for.

– If the NATO partners become recalcitrant, then the USA can also become recalcitrant.[8]

– If Japan remains stubborn, then there will be unadulterated protectionism; it will not be able to withstand it; and it must be made aware of the risks it faces without or with an undermined “security partnership.”

– If the fourth and fifth worlds get out of hand, then all programs concerning them will be canceled, since we now know that they are just “rat holes” (J. Helms) anyway.

– If third world sovereigns don’t bend immediately, they will either be ignored or bombed.

– If Mexico does not prove itself worthy of America’s partnership and cannot take care of its peso on its own and not ensure that US citizens earn good money from it, then it will not get any more credit.

– If free world trade does not work to America’s advantage, then the latest treaty on the subject – the WTO – is worthless and deserves no consideration from the US side.

– If Russia still shows great power ambitions – and it does so simply by being so big – then NATO’s borders will be pushed eastwards, which is, after all, what America has the alliance for, and SDI plans will resume.

What underlies this list of complaints is obvious: America’s money, its weapons, and its diplomacy no longer work like they used to. It is also obvious that this is due to the growing power of other states and because their competition has shaken certain “habits” of American dominance in the world. And with that, the diagnosis is complete: the other states are to blame – and America has failed to assert its just and legitimate interests. Once the world looks like this, there is no longer any need to consider what the USA gains from other states; a previously quite normal guiding principle has completely outlived its usefulness, namely that America’s position couldn’t be strengthened without dealing with other states, without agreements and coordination, even if annoying resistance arose from time to time; and finally, the very idea of having to offer something to others in order for them to remain partners or to comply with US interests borders on treason.

World politics can no longer be conceived as a business because this always contains an element of “do ut des”; and it is precisely this relationship that has gone off the rails, if it was not – as it seems from the new perspective – a mistake from the outset. The new paradigm is simple and decisive: the aim is to assert oneself, to create facts that the others have to work off, and to take what America is entitled to. The Republicans are thus rejecting a world order that made America a world power in the first place[9] – for a reason that makes perfect sense to them: this world order is no longer the unquestionable guarantee of world power status. They reject this order without being able or even wanting to conjure up a new one: They are firmly convinced that this will come about when the USA renounces compromise and only seeks its own advantage. That is why the list of complaints is also a list of measures – the others should see how they will deal with it.

The leadership must represent this clearly and resolutely. This is precisely the general mistake of President Clinton, who is pursuing a completely wrong “strategy.” Instead of emphatically pointing out to all other states what they are (not) allowed to do, his “bureaucratic apparatus” wastes far too much time, money and effort analyzing conflicting interests and ambitions, seeking compromises and responding diplomatically.[10] Since he does not decisively oppose anti-American aspirations, his actions consistently and fatally amount to recognizing these aspirations; by engaging with them, such disruptions of the American-guaranteed world order are outright elevated to the rank of “parameters” of American foreign policy to be taken into account. Anyone who shows such leniency instead of rigorously rejecting the presumptions of subordinate or insignificant powers is – and this logic is already familiar – entering very dangerous waters: he is rewarding precisely those things that are completely incompatible with America’s political and moral standpoint – rebellion, unfairness, unjust profits, parasitism, in short: anti-American behavior. They are therefore damaging America and causing everything that can be summed up under “decline.” At the moment, “the others” are profiting from the fact that the US leadership is allowing itself to be embroiled in all sorts of problems that shouldn’t be its own; the accusation of complicity is not far off, because anyone who lets bad guys get away with it is (almost) one themselves. Money is then squandered on incompetence – in Mexico, for example. And not only that: by rewarding this incompetence, the dishonest opponents of the American taxpayer are encouraged in their parasite mentality:

“The deep concern (about the Mexican peso) contrasts strikingly with the lack of understanding in Congress... Lawmakers point out that there was no popular support for the loan guarantees... In Congress, the majority portrayed the guarantees as a bailout of ‘rich Wall Street investors’ and an incompetent Mexican government.”[11]

This, by the way, also “explains” the problem with the dollar: if American taxpayer money keeps flowing into the wrong, illegitimate channels – including the fifth column of international finance capital – it’s no wonder that things are going badly.

On a crash course – first consequences

So this is the order that the Republicans want to impose on the world: Pure competition.[12] The previous understanding that competition needed regulations – set by the USA, monitored by the USA, ensuring the USA’s advantage – has proven untenable, because these regulations had (also) bound America, which has been harmful to it and weakened it. Not really, of course, but only as long as this understanding continues to be upheld – if the new paradigm, pure competition, comes into force, America will be ahead again. The Republicans are thus announcing a revision of all routine relationships, traditional alliances, and established procedures. This does not mean that they have been terminated at the moment, but the message is clear: the USA is already beyond influence in its global actions.

With the same attitude that led them to pass the budget bill, the Republicans are setting out to disrupt the world order. Conscious of the enormous “disruptive potential” that they represent, they are going on a crash course for a global order in their interests. They are not concerned with defined interests that they want to enforce by hook or by crook, but rather are shaking up this order because US interests within it have been weakened and skewed, because their clear line and national advantage are no longer recognizable – and the USA must now find out what it values in the world and what it wants to achieve as a result. If, for example, it radicalizes NATO’s eastward expansion, then it is subjecting NATO to a test that even includes the question of its durability, because it wants to know what and whether this alliance is still any good for it. If, for example, it confronts the UN with a condition – “dollar for dollar” – that tends to undermine this organization, then it is directly asking whether there is still any benefit to this organization that interests it, or whether it would not be better to turn away from it altogether and let it collapse.

The government cannot ignore this; quite the contrary. If the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State feel compelled to publish a joint letter to the editor in the “New York Times” before the UN vote in Congress, then they are already in the midst of a rearguard action. They have understood very well that the entire foreign policy of the USA is under attack and is about to change. They want to defend themselves by trying to make the old system palatable to the Republicans as advantageous – partners would be harnessed and costs passed on:

“This bill would eliminate an effective tool for burden sharing that every President from Harry Truman to George Bush has used to advance American interests. It would leave the President with an unacceptable option whenever an emergency arose: act alone or do nothing.”

But now the Republicans have just said that they want the advantages to be proven first and that they believe that burden sharing involves too much American leniency and consideration for foreign interests, that America should take a much more principled “act alone” position, and that they cannot share the opinion of the “unacceptable option.” Perry and Christopher have heard precisely this message and promise to do better:

“Effective American leadership abroad requires that we back our diplomacy with the credible threat of force. When our vital interests are at stake, we must be prepared to act alone. And in fact, our willingness to do so is often the key to effective joint action. By mobilizing the support of other nations and leveraging our resources through alliances and institutions, we can achieve important objectives without asking American soldiers to bear all the risks, or American taxpayers to pay all the bills. That is a sensible bargain the American people support.”[13]

The promised improvement consists of trying to blackmail the partners and exploit them for their own interests; the “sensible bargain” is still “old thinking,” but already very one-sided. By expressing it so clearly, the two Secretaries are more in tune with the tone that the Republicans want to hear. This has not stopped the latter from passing the UN bill anyway – but future compromises are on the horizon. However, this means: the government is also acting in their interests.

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[1] Quotes from: “The Contract with America,” signed by 300 Republican congressmen and candidates on 9/27/94.

[2] This is something that the few left-wing intellectuals who have been trying for a few years to correct the American self-portrayal of the conquest of the “frontier” and the national image of the Second World War on the basis of “historical facts” in the direction of a “fairer” appreciation of the victims have to learn. They are faced with the counterattack that this is not about what really happened, but about the nation’s right to an honorable image of itself and its history. Victorious nations simply do not know the “Auschwitz lie”!

[3] For which they reap appropriate malice after their victory: The media enthusiastically trampled on the fact that family fanatic Newt Gingrich presented his wife with a divorce petition on her sickbed and planned to turn his newfound fame into a book project that would earn him $45 million.

[4] In this respect, Clinton’s idea of helping out national competitiveness with a European-style health and education policies was indeed a novelty in the American way of doing capitalism.

[5] It is with this in mind that the Republican candidate for governor in Californian has been given a mandate by the voters to exclude illegal immigrants and their children from medical care and schooling. On this, governors and governed agree: by definition, foreigners do not belong to the legitimate community of good Americans and therefore do not deserve to benefit from their services. If politicians see it as their duty to differentiate between useful and worthless lives, then it is the duty of the representatives of America’s “intellectual elite” (whose IQ is beyond doubt) to demonstrate how far one is not allowed to go – but how far one can think. Wouldn’t it be best to kill the wretched, the disabled, and the degenerate right from the start? – This is what happened in the magazine of the “mensa” association. This provoked neither a national outcry nor a judgment on the “intelligentsia” assembled there, but only raised cautious questions as to whether this might not be going a little too far, especially since one is not supposed to think such things “since Auschwitz.” Another nice objection!

[6] In this worldview, it is clear that cuts must be made and where. However, this initially normal bourgeois conclusion should not obscure the fact that the then undoubtedly unknown radical impoverishment is a side effect of a new kind of state-making.

[7] According to Jesse Helms, who after decades of existence as an “ultra-rightist in American politics” has made it to the important post of Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even the combat readiness of the US military apparatus is at risk due to the incompetence of Commander-in-Chief Clinton.

[8] Dole caused quite a stir in Europe on the occasion of his visit to NATO headquarters. He was adamant in his view that the USA should pursue its own Yugoslavia policy and that the arms embargo on Bosnia should be lifted for this very reason, and obviously lacked diplomatic tact –simply by ignoring objections that this would break up the common front and jeopardize the “solidarity of the Alliance”; instead, he countered by asking how the “loyalty of the NATO partners” was actually doing, thus calling it into question – so that the more or less official “spokespersons” subsequently reported on a “dialog between deaf-mutes” and on very contrary positions.

[9] The “order” of the world into two large hostile systems provided the USA with the leadership and supremacy role that allowed it to define and enforce its claim to success on an (almost) global scale, precisely because all competitors subordinated themselves as “partners” in the clash of systems – in their own interest. With the abolition of the systems, this interest no longer exists. Instead, there are now “merely” a number of states that agree that capitalism is their livelihood, but which for this very reason have declared a whole series of completely independent, opposing interests to be their “vital” interests and no longer want to be bound by a system idea. With the victory over communism, the system partners are no longer compelled to subordinate themselves to US power out of their own interests and will to defend themselves, to develop themselves as a (sub)power through constant cooperation and integration; they assert their interests against the USA, and in so doing exploit the means and concentrate on the special spheres of influence that have accrued to them in the course of their membership in the old system.

[10] The term “Realpolitik,” borrowed from German, often appears as an insult. The “coercive diplomacy” towards North Korea and Haiti is, on the one hand, progress, because Clinton threatens (“coercive”) with the full force of American power, but on the other hand, in the eyes of his critics, he destroys it in the next moment, because this toughness is then supposed to lead to agreement with the opponent (“diplomacy”); ultimately, the impression of a cocky and at the same time oppressive power remains.

[11] Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2.2.95

[12] Accustomed to outdated terms, commentators like to refer to this as “isolationism.” When Americans warn against this, they think that the USA is trying to lose its global political opportunities – when it is currently shuffling the deck. European critics come closer to the point when they think of “unilateralism”: “‘Isolationism’ is actually the wrong label; it should more accurately be called “unilateralism” – the impulse to make American policy on its own, independently of others, especially of the major institutions that have given form and legitimacy to world politics over the last half-century.” (SZ, February 16, 1995) “Form and legitimacy” is a nice way of putting it. The Americans are to be reminded that everything once had such pleasantly civilized forms – and at the same time there is fear that the Americans can simply blow up this “framework,” informally and illegitimately. They do not need the European’s satisfaction with the previous procedure as an informative pointer; their own dissatisfaction is enough for them.

[13] New York Times, February 13, 1995.