It's oil, not democracy, that attracts U.S.

Gary Younge, Guardian News Service, London

After the United States encouraged the secession of Panama from Colombia in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt suffered qualms of conscience.

Having promised the new state American military protection to secure a good price for the construction and future ownership of the Panama Canal, Roosevelt asked his attorney general, Philander Knox, to articulate a principled defense for his actions. "Oh, Mr President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality."

Almost a century later, one wonders whether President Bush has the same qualms and what the response would be around his cabinet table if he did. Two weeks ago in Venezuela, the democratically elected leader, Hugo Chavez, was ousted in a coup that lasted only 48 hours.

Where a populist president once stood, the head of a private business lobby briefly became head of state. No conclusive evidence has yet emerged to suggest that America supported the botched overthrow. But it is clear that the U.S. both knew it was going to happen and did nothing to stop it.

Throughout the ordeal America, which has roamed the globe since Sept. 11 declaring its determination to protect "democracy and civilization" at the barrel of a gun, suddenly lost its tongue. When the coup finally crumbled Chavez emerged not to warm support but a stern warning from Bush that he "hoped Chavez had learned his lesson".

The lesson in question is clear if double-edged. On the one hand, America supports democracy when democracy supports America. But when there is no democracy, dictatorships will do just as well -- and at times even better.

The sticking point, in each instance, is not whether citizens of all nations have the right to choose their own leaders; but whether leaders, freely elected or not, of any nation have the right to choose a course which runs against whatever the U.S. perceives its interests to be at a given moment.

Chavez did not support America. He did not go out of his way to attack America either. But he had close ties with Cuba, made overtures to Saddam Hussein and Col. Moammar Qaddafi, criticized the bombing of Afghanistan, taxed the rich and had begun a thoroughgoing redistribution of land in a country where more than 80 per cent live in poverty.

Even though his popularity had plummeted in recent times, this was the program on which Chavez was elected. As such, he was a shining example of a route that Zimbabwe might have taken had Robert Mugabe decided to depend on popular support rather than descend into autocratic megalomania. Sadly, the story of the Venezuelan coup is a shining example of just how much scope there is for a small country to make radical change in the interests of its people through democratic means.

Conversely, those who eschew the popular will and embrace America receive very different treatment. Take Pakistan. Three years ago General Pervez Musharraf seized power in a military coup and became an international pariah. Last September he redeemed himself by supporting the war on Afghanistan. Since then aid has poured in, sanctions have been scrapped and debt has been rescheduled.

Last week. he further ingratiated himself by giving the U.S. forces permission to follow al-Qaeda into Pakistan territory. Elections were scheduled for this October, after which a newly elected national parliament and provincial assemblies would elect a president. Not any more. Voting will still take place but the presidency will not be up for grabs.

Instead, on Tuesday there will be a referendum asking voters whether they would like Musharraf to remain president for another five years. To ensure victory, political parties have been banned from holding rallies, he has refused the right of former, elected and currently exiled premiers to return and oppose the referendum, and beaten up journalists and opponents. Musharraf's will be the only name on the ballot.

American foreign policy not only tolerates this kind of behavior; at times it positively depends on it. It is thanks to the monarchs and dictators of the Arab world that the widespread anger over recent events in the Middle East have not erupted into popular and violent disturbances.

Those who bandy about accusations of knee-jerk anti- Americanism might check their own reflexes rather than offering uncritical support to the U.S. at this most critical time. "`Our country is strong,' we are told again and again," wrote American intellectual Susan Sontag after Sept. 11. "I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be."

Moreover, the U.S. would not be able to conduct this agenda without the craven support of most of the rest of the developed world, Britain being key.

The main concern is not so much that America's current foreign policy is informed by self-interest -- that is true of most countries -- but that it is unrestrained by any strategy beyond that. In just over a year, the U.S. has angered Europe with its steel tariffs, the Arab world over Israel and Afghanistan, much of South America with both alleged complicity in Venezuela and indifference to the plight of Argentina, and just about everybody with its rejection of the Kyoto environmental protocol.

White House attempts to wrap up this blunderbuss approach in moral imperatives would be laughable if the consequences were not so dire. Bush talks of bolstering "the dignity and value of every individual" -- tell that to the people of Jenin.

Secretary of state Colin Powell offers clarity that ultimately spells even greater contradiction. "Over the past year, the broader tapestry of our foreign policy has become clear," he says. "It is to encourage the spread of democracy and market economies." An assertion that must baffle steel workers in Europe and democrats in Islamabad alike.

As America trains its sights on Iraq in the coming months we will hear much of how the latter has flouted resolutions from the United Nations -- a body the U.S. has long since dispensed with whenever convenient. We will hear tales of Saddam Hussein's demagogy, vicious treatment of the Kurds and kleptomaniac ostentation in a land where many starve. Many, if not most, will be true. All will be irrelevant.

America is no more interested in establishing democracy in Iraq than it is about preserving it in Venezuela. The crucial factors, in both cases, are that they are oil-rich, non-compliant states. Talk of democracy and human rights, in this context, is yet more moral camouflage for yet another immoral war.

Says Lewis Libby, one of U.S. defense secretary Dick Cheney's senior advisers: "There is no basis in Iraq's past behavior to have confidence in good faith efforts on their part to change their behavior." Almost a century after the secession of Panama, precisely the same can still be said of America.