NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/5398

Text File | 1992-07-27 | 6.5 KB | 144 lines

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!ukma!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!daemon
From: [e-mail] (N.Y. Transfer)
Subject: ANALYSIS:Behind the fall of Ross Perot/WW
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: [e-mail]
Sender: [e-mail]
Nntp-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 03:52:10 GMT
Approved: [e-mail]
Lines: 128



Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

                  Behind the fall of Ross Perot

                           By Sam Marcy

To many, the sudden rise of H. Ross Perot is regarded merely as a
passing electoral phenomenon: here today, gone tomorrow. But
there is another dimension to it which has either been wholly
neglected or obscured; it has to do with the struggle within?
the capitalist establishment to reorient the foreign policy of
U.S. imperialism in the light of the counter-revolution in the
USSR.

Perot's bid for the presidency is the third in this century by a
billionaire empire. The first of course was by Henry Ford; that
too was not a very serious bid for presidential power, although
Ford like Perot attained a considerable momentary popularity,
mostly fostered by millions of dollars lavishly dispensed from
their respective empires.

The bid made by the Rockefellers was far more serious, and the
fact that Nelson Rockefeller had been elected governor of New
York and assiduously cultivated a liberal image did much to raise
his stature as a political possibility for the presidency. But in
the end the ruling summits of finance capital showed as they did
with Ford and Perot that they are more suspect of one of their
own dynasties taking over the administration of the capitalist
state to their own detriment than if they had someone outside of
the ruling monopoly groupings.

The fear that Perot in particular may more likely "shake down"
the capitalist government rather than shake it up as promised was
undoubtedly a factor in his withdrawal from the race. But it is
his foreign policy inclinations and the group that he represents
which should engage our attention.

A great deal of publicity was given to the resignation of Perot's
campaign manager, Edward Rollins, and his assistant. By contrast,
scarcely any publicity was given to the earlier resignation of
Paul H. Nitze, who was part of Perot's foreign policy advisory
committee. Nitze's resignation may have had a lot more to do with
it than one may assume from the published reports in the
capitalist press.

Paul H. Nitze is not just another foreign policy expert from the
ruling capitalist establishment. He is from the inner core of the
military industrial complex, although he is not known to be an
official of any of the huge corporate complexes among the
military contractors. He should be remembered as the founder and
chairperson of the notorious Committee Against the Present
Danger, which initiated and organized the campaign to put
the U.S. military machine on a war footing.

The pretext for this committee's campaign was the intervention by
the USSR in Afghanistan in December 1979 following an attempted
counter-revolution by pro-imperialist forces in Afghanistan. The
hundreds of billions that were subsequently spent in reorganizing
and modernizing the U.S. war machine owes a lot to Nitze's
initiative on behalf of the military industrial complex. That he
should be an adviser and undoubtedly a principal one for the
Perot campaign says a lot about Perot's foreign policy. Nitze's
resignation says a great deal more.

According to The New York Times of July 16, Nitze said he
"decided not to continue on the advisory committee because he was
appalled at some of the positions that Perot was reportedly
contemplating." Nitze said, "Perot felt that the United States
should declare itself to be a Pacific and Asian power and pay
less attention to Europe. ...

"That's undoubtedly true," Nitze said, "They can take care of
themselves. But that doesn't mean we don't have an interest in
maintaining relations with Europe."

What all this signifies is the re-emergence of an extreme military
grouping, long to have been moribund, having come to life again.
It goes far beyond the significance of Perot himself or together
with his colleagues in his industrial empire.  This grouping is so
extreme that even Nitze finds both Perot and his grouping
appalling.

Lest the reader believe that this is some sort of re-enactment of
the debate in the foreign policy establishment of the U.S. during
the weeks and months before World War II, it would best be seen
in the context of putting new poison in old bottles. That old
grouping was isolationist; this new grouping is rabidly
interventionist and obsessed with the perspective of U.s.
domination in the Pacific and all of Asia.

The continuing ascendancy of Japan as the industrial and
technological leader in Asia is undoubtedly the factor motivating
this group. Even more so is the prospect of a revitalized
revolutionary China, which is not a prospect at this time but is
certainly inherent in the situation, given the fact that no
full-scale counter-revolution has taken place in China and that
the continuing flow of capitalist investment into China
strengthens the fears of U.S. militarists that it will all
redound to the benefit of a reinvigorated Chinese Socialist
Republic.

But who is for abandoning Europe? That's a canard in the first
{place, but it is best to know who has the strongest interest and
fears in Europe. It is all the monopolies; they rely on European
imperialism to guard the vast oil riches of the Middle East where
two-thirds of all the know oil reserves of the world are located.
In the final analysis it is the European imperialists powers and
the Israeli puppet state that stand guard against the millions of
Middle Eastern people whose anti-imperialist hostility can only
grow as the years of U.S.  domination continue. But it is the
European imperialists that the oil monopolies and the U.S.
capitalist class as a whole fear as rivals. This is particularly
so with Germany and France; British imperialism of course is a
junior partner of U.S. imperialism.

                               -30-

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers@cdp!igc.org".)


-----
NY Transfer News Service
Modem: 718-448-2358  [e-mail]  [e-mail]