The 'un-republican' victory in the U.S. election

B. Herry-Priyono, Researcher, Alumnus, London School of Economics, herryprb@lse.ac.uk

Alexis de Tocqueville, that most patrician of democratic theorists of America, once wrote in his celebrated Democracy in America: "An American will attend to his [sic.] private interests as if he were alone in the world ... Sometimes he seems to be animated by the most selfish greed and sometimes by the most lively patriotism."

Whether that patriotism is pursued in some bellicose manner is another matter, for "lively" is in the eyes of the beholder. The mid-term victory of the Republicans and their control over the House of Representatives and Senate, plus the White House, is likely to be the avenue to the blurring between being "lively" and "bellicose". The setting is, of course, the downturn besieging the economy and the yell of war against Iraq.

As for the poor and developing world, a Swahilian proverb may apply: Whether the elephants make love or make war, it is the grass that suffers. As Jeffrey Sachs, then Director of the Harvard Center for International Development, said: "Although its prosperity depends on a worldwide network of trade, finance and technology, the United States currently treats the rest of the world, and especially the developing world, as if it barely exists" (The Economist, July 14 2001).

Even within the country itself, the vigorous campaign for tax- cuts, pursued in tandem with less social spending, has sent tremors to the parties concerned with the sustainability of American society. For those concerned with the common welfare of global society, the alert is more serious.

Of course, the Republican mandarins in Washington will never state explicitly the true intent of their policy in this direction. What we reap, as usual, is the unintended consequences of their renewed military and neo-liberal economic adventures.

This is more than just a speculation. While Bush is prepared to spend US$100 billion on raiding Iraq, he has been unwilling to spend more than 0.2 percent of that sum ($200 million) this year on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

While at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development Bush urged "the developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts toward the target of 0.7 percent of GNP as official development assistance to developing countries", his regime falls $60 billion a year short of that rhetoric.

What happens is that the annual military spending since Bush MBA entered the White House has risen by about that amount. In the end, an economic neo-liberal is not a freedom-lover, but a monopoly player. With the rise and rise of Bush's Republicans, the coming years may become fiesta years for military caudillos. For a country constantly in danger of militarism like Indonesia, this is a predicament that should alert all democratically concerned parties.

Sachs has warned: "White House and State Department foreign- policy experts are overwhelmingly directed toward military and diplomatic issues, not development issues." (The Economist, Nov. 3 2002).

The Republicans' overwhelming victory in the U.S. political economy, however, has more far-reaching implications for poor and developing countries. First, the emerging reassessments of the bestial faces of neo-liberal global political-economic arrangement, which have grown in scale since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, are likely to encounter fierce resistance from the brashly self-confident Republican mandarins in Washington.

While both at the intellectual and practical levels the neo- liberal model has been found deficient and unsustainable, the vice of "patriotic greed" in Tocqueville's vivid depiction of America is most likely to be the rule in the coming days. Instead of being checked by its recent business scandals, corporate power will be expanding both in scale and depth.

Second, the fate of "public policy" both at the global and national levels, which has been recently becoming less and less public, is likely to be more in limbo. The virtue of many criticisms against the present character of neo-liberal globalization is that common welfare is becoming less and less the intended goal of public policy than merely unintended consequences of the ruthless and unenlightened pursuit of business profits.

This is true either in the areas of health, education, social security, or environment.

One does not need to be a policy expert to know that the way the Kyoto Protocol was being subverted has something to do with the unholy alliance between the Washington policy mandarins and their oil and energy business cronies.

What is at stake here is that common welfare and the fate of society at large is increasingly not the effect of purposive agenda, but, rather, the scraps that fall from the financial masters' party tables. In short, public policy is increasingly in danger of losing its raison d'etre.

Third, the Republican victory is less a cause for celebration than a signal for caution. The Cold War may be over, but the thirst for a Cold War-like domination remains insatiable. As the history of the 20th century has taught us, poor and developing countries are likely to be more prone to American political and economic cabalism.

The hope is that the "social model" of the European Union would rise to the occasion and counterbalance the cabals now at loose.

Based on their policy orientation, the Republican victory in the U.S. is a role model the global community cannot follow. Not because it is anti-American, but because of its increasing penchant for, in Sachs' words, treating the rest of the world "as if it barely exists".

Indeed, the only way to make good use of triumph is to harness it as belonging to something else: Global common goods and the possibility for progressive, imaginative and generous alternatives to whatever is wrong and lacking in the world. This, in fact, is the essence of republicanism. As we know, the word comes from Latin res (thing, affair, interest) and publica (public, common).

That same patrician Tocqueville once wrote that the selfish tendency at the heart of American democracy can only be mitigated by "republicanism". Alas, the Republican victory a few days ago is very un-republican.